


Aid

by Haurvatat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: An all-around bad time, Deaf!Lance, Drugging, Excessively Detailed Information About Space Travel, Gen, Hurt Lance, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Kidnapping, PTSD, Persian Lance, Torture, Whump, girl pronoun!Pidge, hell if i know where i meant to go with this, introspective horseshit, phonetic alphabets are great right up until they read in the opposite direction of English, unbeta'd trash heap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:39:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 68,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haurvatat/pseuds/Haurvatat
Summary: Frankly, the only person on Team Voltron with their shit relatively together is Hunk.  Lance tries so hard, but... he can't help but feel there's a reason he never gets too far with that one, and maybe not 100% of it is Keith's fault.  All it takes is one battle, one accident, one mistake, and one secret to make it all rise to the surface.





	1. Hey, Listen

Shiro was biting out orders over the comms and Lance was trying, really trying, to follow them.  In Lance’s defense, this whole thing got a shit-ton harder when eleventy billion Galra drone ships were trying to kill you.

There was one great big honkin’ laser ion cannon thing on the main cruiser, but it was obviously protected by some heavy-duty shielding.  According to Coran’s scans, there were at least five separate shields inside of one another, like the world’s most lethal (and annoying) onion.  No choice but to stay as separate Lions and hunt out the various power converters around the base of the shielding that were keeping them stable.  Goodie.  Scavenger hunts.  While being shot at a whole lot.  Lance’s favorite.

Saving the universe sounded a lot cooler on paper.

It wasn’t fair.  Hunk had the best armor out of all the Lions, and so was basically unbreakable.  Shiro had the biggest, angriest sumbitch of a machine with all sorts of fancy functions that Lance was absolutely certain they’d discover a tenth of someday.  Keith had the fastest, and also the one with the second-highest attack power after Shiro’s.  Double whammy.  And Pidge?  Pidge, being rad but also selfish, had made her Lion _fucking invisible_ and then refused to share the love.  Where did that leave Lance?  He had literally no advantage to his name and it was really starting to tick him off.

 **Well, we can ice things over.  Hydrokinesis, you know** , Lance heard echo in his mind.

“Oh yeah.  Real helpful.  Here in the middle of space where there’s no water.  Gonna decide loads of battles like that.  So glad you know just how to cheer me up, Abi,” Lance said.

Shir’abi (Lance’s pet name for his lion, which uncreatively translated to Blue Lion) projected feelings of both disdain and derision.  Yeah, whatever.  He knew she was trying to help, but still.  She couldn’t just let him bitch here and there?

A shot glanced off them and shook the cockpit.  Lance swore and pulled back on the controls.  “Abi!  What happened to my shielding?!”

 **…It appears to have fucked up, but don’t take my word for it,** she said.

“Great.  Magical.  Guys?  Please tell me at least one of you found the first power converter?”  Lance tried to hear the radio chatter going on in the back.

Hunk’s voice drifted over.  “Uhhh… not on my end?  I think mine’s the… yeah, mine’s the third one in.  Who’s got the others?  Keith?”

“Not me.  Mine’s the second.”

“Mine’s fourth in,” Shiro said.  “Lance’s got to have the fifth if he’s asking.  Pidge, are you in position yet?”

Pidge growled over the comms, raising static crackle.  “Give me just a bleeping minute.  Just because they can’t see me doesn’t mean they can’t hit me.  I’m trying not to die here.  Seems like the only thing they teach the Galra in space boot camp is the Spray-‘n’-Pray method of aiming.”

“Always seemed to work for me,” Hunk said.

“Yeah, I’ll bet it did,” Lance said.  He was about to make another joke when another shot glanced off his Lion’s rear.  “Christ!  Uhhh… guys?  I don’t have a light yet, but I think I’m about to.  Too many more hits and I’m going to start losing systems.  Air filtration’s back there and the cold vacuum of space beckons.”

“…And you’re last up so you’re taking the most hits.  Right.  Sorry, Lance.”

“Don’t apologize, just get to work!”

Pidge’s voice cut in.  “I’m here!  And- tell me if this works!”

Whatever she did, the first shield blurred, then shattered apart.

“Yes!  Good job, Pidge!” Shiro said.  “Keith!”

“Got it,” Keith said.  A loud crunching noise was heard through the mic and the second shield faded away.

Lance peeked over a shoulder.  That… was a lot of reinforcements.  They really needed to pick up the pace.  Pidge and Keith had already pulled back and were going to the rendezvous point – as soon as the shields were down, Voltron was going up.  Lance was going to be the only one sitting out here alone if they hadn’t finished by the time the fucking backup squad rolled in.  They looked significantly beefier than the drones that had been plaguing them thus far.  He winced.  No point in mentioning that to the guys.  They’d figure it out soon enough.  And he didn’t want to seem like a weenie right in front of Keith.  Or Shiro.  Or anyone, really.

 **Bad idea** , Shir’abi said.

“I’ll let you know if I decide to ask,” Lance muttered.  The third shield vanished.  Hunk must’ve smashed his converter.  Just Shiro to go, and then Lance was up.

Of course that’s when everything went to shit.

Apparently, some of the reinforcements were faster than others, and a plasma bolt slammed into the Blue Lion’s hindquarters, spinning them like a toy.  Lance bit out a screamed f-bomb or twenty.

And then he felt something drop from his right ear.  He went dead white in the face.

Just great.

\--

“Lance?  Lance?!  Sit-rep, now!” Shiro shouted into the comms.  Why wasn’t he answering?  Shiro had taken out his converter as quickly as he could, knowing that it couldn’t be too long before additional troops were sent out to intercept them.  The Galra always came in waves.  March over their own dead on the way to victory.  It was just how they worked.  Evidently, they’d come sooner than anticipated, because he’d heard Lance curse six ways from Sunday, and then… nothing.  Radio silence.  His shield was the last one still up.  Surely, if he were okay… he’d have already destroyed his converter by now, right?

Shiro gunned it to the rendezvous point.  “Please tell me someone’s got visuals on Lance!”

Hunk answered.  “Yeah, here.  Blue doesn’t look too damaged.  Spun him around a little but I think they’re okay.”

“Then why-?  He’s not answering, and he’s not doing his job!  What the hell does he think he’s-?” Shiro snapped his own jaw shut before he said something he knew he’d regret.  You never had to apologize for words you never said in the first place.

Still… Hunk’s reassurances aside, he couldn’t help the gnawing feeling that something was very wrong.

\--

Lance was openly hyperventilating.  It had to be here.  It was tiny.  It couldn’t have gotten far.  Surely if he just groped around long enough, he could find the stupid thing and shove it back in his ear where it belonged.  Another hit slammed against the side of the Lion, and Lance was thrown to the opposite side of his chair.  There.  It had slid all the way to the far left wall of the cockpit with that last strike.  He couldn’t reach from his seat.

This was literally the dumbest thing he’d ever done in the heat of battle.

He undid the safety harness and jumped out of his seat, grabbing it and ripping off his helmet to shove it in his ear.

And that’s when two shots hit the Blue Lion simultaneously.  Lance was thrown into the console, the sharp angles slamming into his spine.  He couldn’t do much more than let out a tiny groan of shock and pain as his body rolled to the floor.  At least his helmet was still clenched in his hand.  Where it was doing his head a great deal of good.  Blood ran down his forehead as he pried himself off the floor, dragging the chair closer to him so he could crawl back in.  Harness on, helmet on.  The radio chatter flooded back.

“-know you’re alive!  Please, you have to answer!  Lance!”  Voices all overlapped, but Lance definitely picked up Shiro’s there.

“I- I’m… I got it.  We’re okay.  We’re okay.”

“Lance?”

“Oh, thank Christ.  You’re okay?”

“What the fuck just happened?”

“I…” Lance fumbled.  “Dropped something.”

Silence.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“What the hell did you drop that could be important enough to-?”

“What were you thinking?!”

“Not the point,” Shiro’s voice cut through, cold.  Lance felt a chill through his body.  “Just take out the last converter.  We have a job to do.”

Lance did was he was told.

His body felt so cold the whole time.  Shiro was disappointed in him.  Angry at him.  He’d had exactly one job.  Surely he didn’t need additional instructions to figure out what he was supposed to do when the fourth shield fell.  Why had he…?

Everyone was so disappointed in him.  By him.

Well… not necessarily everyone.  Hunk hadn’t said anything.  Maybe he was trying to be a good friend or something.  Not that he’d defended Lance when Keith and Pidge were ripping him a new one, so hell, maybe Lance’d fucked that one up, too.

 **It’ll be all right, _Bačéyé mahn_** , Shir’abi whispered.  **Just tell them the truth.  They’ll understand**.

Lance almost laughed.  “Understand, sure.  But they’d never trust me to watch their backs again.”

He could feel her sigh deep down in his soul.

\--

On his way back to his room from his hangar, Lance made the fatal mistake of passing the common room.

“Hey, Lance!” Keith called.  “Wanna explain to the team here what the fuck that was all about?”

Lance paused, turned, and glared into the room through the doorframe.  “Maybe when you stop being an asshole about literally everything, I’ll consider it.”

Keith spluttered and Shiro took a deep breath.  “I don’t mean to phrase this in a confrontational way, Lance, but I do hope there is an explanation.  Something happened and… well, you weren’t particularly descriptive,” he said.

“…I know.  That was kind of on purpose.  Listen, it won’t happen again, okay?  I’ll stop being a fuck-up in general.  Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Whatever crawled up your ass and died, it’s no small thing.  Shiro’s just trying to help, although I can’t figure out why he bothers,” Pidge said.  “We all could have died while you were rooting around the floor for… whatever it is you said you dropped.  Would it have been worth it?  Huh?  And would it have killed you to answer when we were all yelling trying to figure out if you were even _alive_ or not?”

“Guys, can you all lay off Lance?” Hunk asked, rubbing his forehead like he needed a boatload of aspirin.

Good man.  Good friend.

Hunk knew what was going on.  They’d been roommates in the Garrison dorms, so of course he’d figured out everything early on.  Lance had given a short explanation, and Hunk had just sort of nodded and went with it.  It never really impacted their relationship at all (Hunk had been weirdly helpful and sensitive about the issue, and that was probably why they became such fast friends, all things considered).  If anybody understood what Lance had been trying to say over the comms, it would have been Hunk.

“No!  I’m not going to let him go off and do his own thing like a lunatic when all our lives are at stake!  This is insane and I’m not gonna humor him just for funsies,” Keith said.

“Shiro?” Hunk said, turning.  If anyone would be the voice of reason, Shiro hopefully would step in.

“…I’m afraid I agree.  We have a responsibility both to each other and the universe now.  It can’t be like it was before any of us became Paladins.  Lance, if there is a problem, whatever it is, we need to know.  We might be able to do something to help-“

Lance snorted.  Couldn’t help himself.  He turned on his heel and left.  He didn’t have to listen to this.

On his way out, he heard Keith mutter, “Are you sure we can’t just pick up a different Blue Paladin?”

\--

In the end, Lance ended up turning right back around and making a loop back to Shir’abi’s hangar.

“So… they asked what happened.”

**Did you tell them?**

“No.”

**And how’d that work out for you?**

“Well-“

**No, wait, let me guess.  It went tits up.**

“Pretty much.  All tits were in the upright and locked position.”

**Brilliant.  What now?**

“Now I mope for-“ he checked his watch “-the next two hours or so.  I’ll figure out what to do later.”

**Solid plan.  That was sarcasm.  I really hope you caught the sarcasm.**

“Oh, I caught it all right.  Are all the other lions half the asshole you are?”

He could swear he felt her preen.  **They try their best but they do not succeed.**

Lance laughed, parking his butt by her enormous paws.  He leaned back, trying to be careful of his back and the growing bruises all over his skull.  Already his spine was starting to stiffen, and he couldn’t move his upper body easily.  Even breathing kinda hurt.  Hopefully a good night’s sleep would fix the problem.

“Hey… Shir’abi?  Why’d you pick me?  I’m sure there are loads of potential Blue Paladins out there who could do the job better.”

She was silent for a while.  No specific words came to mind, but he felt the flow of a deep, warm affection surrounding him.  It couldn’t be anything but her love.

 ** _Bačéyé mahn_** , **you misunderstand.  I do not choose based on capabilities or talents, although often those things go hand-in-hand with what I look for.  My paladin must have a Quintessence that matches with mine.  They must have a spirit that forever moves, a vitality that swells and overtakes, a will that cannot be overcome.  I never look for superficial things like fighting ability, which comes and goes.  I look for the most fundamental, irrevocable part of you that can exist.  It can’t be forced.  It can’t be imitated.  And it’s the rarest, most beautiful harmony in this universe.  I don’t care who might be better than you by your bizarre definitions – I would reject them all and keep you forever, if you let me.**

Lance turned his face into her paw, wordless, and tried to blink away the tears.

A knock by the hangar doors.  A head poking in.

“…Hey, Hunk,” Lance said.  He patted the floor beside him.  “Park it here, buddy.”

Hunk shuffled over, face uncharacteristically morose.  He flopped down with an enormous sigh, leaning up against the giant metal paw.  “So what actually happened?”

“One of the blasts knocked my hearing aid out.”

“What about the other one?”

“Battery ran out a week ago.  Not like we can just pop into a local Wal-mart or some shit to replace it, and these things aren’t rechargeable.  I did check my watch battery to see if it’s compatible, but as luck would have it, it’s not.  Ain’t that just the way,” Lance said.

“You should have told me.”

Lance shrugged.  “Didn’t think it was going to be a problem.  And, as usual, I was horribly, horribly wrong.”

“So that’s why you didn’t respond over the comms?”

“Yeah.  Didn’t hear anything you guys were saying.  I probably missed a lot of stuff.  What were they even saying?”

Hunk winced.  “At first they were trying to get visual confirmation that you were… y’know, _alive_ and junk.  Once they thought you might be okay, they were kinda bitching that you weren’t responding or moving at all.”

“How bad?”

“…You when you’re driving in the left lane on a road that’s 45 and some grandma in front of you is going 35, but it’s illegal to pass on the right, so you’re just screaming at her to use the pedal on the right?”

Lance groaned.  “Shit,” he said.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, anyway, I managed to find it, but it was out of reach, so my stupid ass unbuckled my seat belt-“

“Oh no.”

“-Oh yes.  Also had to take off my helmet to put it back in.”

“Oh _no_.”

“Haha, yeah.  That would be exactly when they shot us again and I got thrown into the console and cracked the living fuck out of… I’m gonna guess at least a couple bones?  Unsure which ones, but we’ll find out eventually.  I also might really have screwed up… I think it’s my neck.  Upper back?  Shoulder?  That entire area is a great big mass of pain and I can’t say I’m enjoying it,” Lance said.

“Think a healing pod is in order?”

“You’re kidding, right?  If I go in one of those things, they’re going to be even angrier with me.  They’ll yell about how I’m endangering myself for stupid reasons, and then not even telling the team I’m injured, which is totally even worse somehow, and they’ll be even more curious about what happened up there, and there’s a bunch of questions I can’t answer.”

“You can answer them, you know.”

“Yeah, but guess what?  I don’t wanna.”

Hunk groaned.  “What’s it going to hurt just to tell them outright?”

“You heard Keith.  He already thinks I’m a shitty pilot and a worse paladin.  What’s he gonna think when he finds out I’m _disabled_?”  Lance snorted derisively.

“Man, come on, it’s not like that.”

“Oh yeah?  Then what’s it like?  Go on, tell me.”

“Keith only argues with you because he needs an outlet for being bitchy.”

“And he can’t do that with any of us?”

“Please,” Hunk said, cocking an eyebrow.  “Let’s take stock here.  Pidge might actually kill him, so would Allura, Shiro knows horrifying embarrassing secrets from their childhood, and Coran and I control the food supply, so we’re the last people he’d want to piss off.  He’s got no one to pick a fight with except you.”

“So making me feel like shit is a hobby.  Good to know.”

“Lance, quit it.  You keep him sane.  It gets pretty lonely out in the black.  Plus, you’ve got Blue here.”

“Abi.”

“…Abi.”  Hunk stumbled over the pronunciation only a little.  “My point is, Keith doesn’t really have much of a way to get through stuff on his own.  Shiro’s his only close friend, and Keith refuses to talk to Shiro about his problems because he thinks he’s stressing Shiro out if he does.  He can’t talk to Red because Red is purportedly an asshole.  And he’s standoffish with everyone else.  So, to get himself through it, he rags on you and stabs a whole lot of training bots, and that’s what gets him through the day.”

Lance squinted as his friend.  “And he told you all this?”

“He didn’t have to.  I’m not an idiot.  People are pretty easy to figure out, all things told,” Hunk said.

“Huh.  No kidding.  Well then, why’s Pidge angry with me?” Lance asked.

“She’s freaked out about potentially losing someone else she considers family.  She thinks of you as a dorky jackass older brother, and seeing you dead in the water with a fuckton of Galra ships closing in on you was enough to put her into panic mode, even if she doesn’t totally understand why.  She’s trying to figure out how to keep it from happening again, but at the same time, she’s just plain scared and taking that fear out on you.”

Lance whistled.  “Impressive.  And Shiro?”

“Shiro’s got PTSD something fierce and likes for things to go according to plan because then he doesn’t have to panic.  He’s also feeling super-responsible for anything that happens to us ‘cause he’s in command and I guess that automatically means that he thinks any casualties are his fault.  Remember, we spent a little bit of time thinking you were, like, dead or unconscious or something.  Also PTSD makes people grouchy in general.  It happens,” Hunk said.

“Some spooky shit right there, my friend.”

Hunk looked smug.  “I try.”

“So how do you think they’d react if I told them?”

“Huh.  Tough one.  All three would immediately feel kinda guilty for giving you shit.  Shiro would be super-respectful about it considering he’s got his own handicap.  Pidge would start being pissed all over again that you didn’t come to her with your battery-related issues from the beginning, and she’d also try to invent something to keep them securely in your ears even in battle.  Keith would… I actually have no idea what Keith would do.  Probably go back to acting the way he always does and pretend like it didn’t even happen.  But he’d get off your ass about anything he thinks might be related.  Allura’d be a lot more understanding when you react to klaxon alarms in the middle of the night later than everyone else.”

“Hey, I can’t sleep with them in.  Not my fault,” Lance muttered.

“Pidge would probably try to fix that issue, too.  She’d spend ages pulling up prototypes if you let her.”

Lance studied Hunk for a moment.  “So you think I should really just bite the bullet here.”

“Yeah.  The sooner the better.  The other battery is going to run out pretty soon, and with no spares on board, you’re going to have to resort to lip-reading and my terrible ASL.  I only know a-“

“I know, I know, a _handful_ of words.  Was funny once, but never again,” Lance said.

“Uh, no, dude.  Always funny.  Literally always funny.”

“If you choose to believe that, I’m going to do the honorable thing and not disillusion you.”  Lance made to get up, then froze with a horrified expression on his face, body locking.  “Uh… Hunk?”

“Yeah?  You okay, bro?”

“Remember when I said my neck hurt?”

“…I can get you to the healing pods pretty fast.”

“Please do that.  Right now.  I can’t move.  Hoooooooly shit that hurts.  I may actually die.  Like right here.”

“On it, on it.”

“ _Mérsï ʢéïlï mäm nôn, dûsté mahn_.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome.  Let’s go unbreak your spine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everybody has their own ethnicity headcanon for Lance. My sis thinks he's Filipino, most of the internet thinks he's Hispanic, some think he's Malay, and here my ass is in my own little corner saying "BRO HE'S IRANIAN - THINK ABOUT ALL THE CAT PUNS YOU CAN MAKE AS A PERSIAN" and now I'm picturing Lance obsessively putting blue food coloring in his milk because the words for "lion" and "milk" sound identical in Farsi and it's a visual pun! and I just have a lot of feelings about Lance being deaf. It's just really important to me. There's a reason why he never hears the alarms going off first thing in the morning. Why he talks so loud all the time, often with gesticulation because his hands want to form the words. Why he tries to explain a complicated plan in full detail during infiltration missions using only hand gestures. Why he takes comments about his ears being hideous so badly. Why he's so excited when Abi talks to him and finally, he can hear something nobody else can. The only voice that still reaches him when everything else goes silent. It's just really important to me.


	2. Talk To Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Communication is key.

Keith was practically squirming, staring up at Lance’s stilled face, floating gently in whatever goop comprised the healing pods.  Allura said it should only take an hour or two to patch him up, unless he really _had_ snapped his spine in two, in which case it could take twice that long.  Apparently bones were some complicated shit that housed almost the entirety of the immune system’s baby cells that would one day mature into B- and T-cells, and also a whole bunch of other useful shit.  In discussing it, Allura seemed impressed with the whole system, but right now it was just a pain in the ass that was keeping Lance away from them.

He kinda felt like a raging dick.

Hunk hadn’t really told them much when they’d seen him hauling an unconscious Lance across the castle.  Just that Lance had messed up his spine something horrifying during the last battle and couldn’t move, and that when Hunk made to help him up to get him to the pods, he’d collapsed from the pain.

Keith hadn’t even been sure how that was possible.  Lance had just been through there, walking and being a little shit like nothing was wrong.  He didn’t look injured or in pain at the time.  Although… come to think of it, there had been a few weird flakes of… _something_ on his forehead.  Like blood that had dried and been unsuccessfully scraped off with fingernails.  If he’d really been hurt, why hadn’t he said anything?

Shiro asked much the same question of Hunk, who made a face and then shrugged.

“’Cause he’s a moron, probably.”

“Not to mention,” Allura said, “your human immune systems sometimes respond to critical failures late.  The area around the injury wouldn’t have swollen or been quite so painful immediately after receiving the injury – it might have taken quite a while for his own inflammatory compounds to exacerbate the issue to the point where it… knocked him unconscious.  He likely didn’t think it was very serious up until then.”

Hunk’s mouth twisted again, eyes flicking to the floor, and then he’d continued his onward trek to the healing pods, the rest of the team trailing after him with worry and guilt etched in their features.

“How come it’s always Lance?” Pidge muttered.  She was right.  Back when the castle had been invaded, Lance was the only one to sustain injuries serious enough for the healing pods.  It seemed like whenever anybody got badly hurt, it was always Lance.

A tiny hiss of air from the healing pod.

All eyes in the room locked onto Lance, breaths held.

The pod parted and Lance stumbled out, face pale and looking exhausted.

“Lance!” Shiro said, stepping forward to catch him before he fell.  Lance just sort of leaned into the touch, like he was too dizzy to keep himself upright for long.

“Hey guys,” he said.  His voice was scratchy.

“You okay, man?” Keith asked.

Lance breathed deeply and nodded.  “ _ʢôbäm, ʢôbäm_.”  His eyes flicked over to Hunk.  “Did you…?”

“Nah.  I didn’t tell them.  That’s on you, bro.”

Lance made a face.  “Gotta do it myself then, huh?”

“Yup.”

What the hell were they talking about?  Tell them what?

It must have showed in their expressions because Lance gave a little snort and said, “Hunk wants me to explain exactly how I got injured in the first place.  But first, I’m thinking I could really go for waffles.  In lieu of that, I guess green space goop will suffice.”

They relocated to the kitchens, Lance packing it away like they’d never seen.  According to Coran, that was one side-effect of the healing pods: the massive quantity of energy it took to heal a person had to come from somewhere, and the pods typically borrowed from a person’s natural energy storage reserves in the form of fats and sugars.  Which meant that whenever someone used a pod, they’d come out of it starving.

Eventually, Lance slowed down enough to breathe, pushed himself away from the table, and stood up.

“All right, so…”

Unconsciously, Keith leaned in.

Lance heaved the world’s biggest sigh.  “…When I was four, my mom was pregnant with my twin sisters, so we had to find someplace with more space in it.  My folks were dirt-poor and so we moved into the cheapest house we could find.”

This was not where Keith had been expecting this story to go.

“The house was pretty much great, like, with running water and doors that closed and HVAC and everything – yeah, I know, low standards, but remember we were broke as fuck, so that’s all really important stuff.  But anyway, we were low-key wondering why the rent was so low, and the next morning we figured it out:  the place was right next to an active military airfield.  Planes were going in and out of that place faster than we could really keep track, and holy _shit_ were they loud.”

Pidge shot a questioning look at Keith, who shrugged.  He didn’t know what Story Time was supposed to accomplish, either.

“Anyway… so yeah.  And that’s why I’m permanently deaf.”

They froze.  Stared at Lance in shock.

“Wait, but… But you’ve been-“

“I’ve got hearing aids.  Only reason I’ve been able to follow a conversation.  I mean, one of ‘em’s out of batteries… or at least I think it’s out of batteries?  It never worked quite right after that whole bombing incident, so there might be something worse wrong with it, but whatever.  I only really need one to function, even if it’s really weird.”

Keith’s brain backtracked as best he could.  How Lance got hurt in the first place.  The most recent battle.  How Lance hadn’t been answering any of his comms.  He’d said he dropped something.  He would have had to take the helmet off to put it back in.

…Christ.

“Fuck,” he whispered, shoving a hand through his hair.

Shiro looked like he’d been kicked squarely in the nuts.  He’d obviously figured it out, too.  “I… God, I’m so sorry, Lance.  I jumped down your throat and didn’t even…”

“Hey, I ain’t fussed.  I didn’t tell you guys on purpose,” Lance said.

“Why not?” Pidge asked.

Lance wouldn’t meet any of their eyes.  “…Who wants a teammate who might not even hear them when they yell for help?  Can any of you really trust me with your lives knowing that it’s a real possibility?”

Shiro’s self-control snapped like a twig and he yanked Lance up into a bruising hug.

Keith gave a broken smile.  “The real question is, who wants a teammate who would abandon his own friends over something stupid like that?”

“Honestly.  He thinks so little of us,” Pidge huffed.  “And asshole, you should have come to me ages ago.  I could probably have fixed your battery issue no sweat, but nooooo, you had to dance around it for no good reason.  That kind of behavior is what worries me more.”

Hunk grinned.  “Ha.  Told you so.”

“So you did,” Lance muttered.  He buried his face in Shiro’s shoulder, kind of just… enjoying it a moment.

Allura frowned.  “You really should have mentioned it a great deal earlier.  While our technology is not completely compatible with human anatomy, it’s possible that with altered programming, we might be able to repair the damage to your hearing-“

“Woah, woah, woah.  Flag on the play there, Princess.  What makes you think I need fixing?” Lance asked.

She stopped still, stunned.

“I… pardon?”

“Listen, I don’t know how this whole thing works on Altea, but on Earth, deafness is practically a culture unto itself.  Like, we have our own languages, our own regional dialects, our own grammar system-“

“It’s true,” Hunk said.  “It’s a nightmare trying to decipher this asshole’s texts.  It’s awful.”

Lance huffed.  “Hey, here I am trying to teach you the grammar system of ASL through other mediums, and you criticize my teaching methods.  Rude.”

“You speak perfect English and like, another three languages besides.  Would it kill you to stick with mainstream usage?”

“Yes,” Lance said.

“Good to know _that’s_ settled,” Shiro said.

Pidge frowned at nothing, eyes screwed up in concentration.  “I… I gotta wonder…”

“Huh?  Wonder what?”

She looked up at Allura.  “Do you remember that whole training thing with trying to see through your lion’s eyes?”

Allura’s eyes widened.  “You don’t think-“

“Well, what if you could hear through your lion’s ears?  Lance, what if you could avoid the situation of hearing aids failing or falling out during combat entirely by just… not wearing them, and letting the Blue Lion translate for you?  You two have always been real chatty for whatever reason.”

Lance looked thoughtful.  “I don’t know, but it sounds plausible.  We got on pretty well from the start because she thinks and communicates in concepts and representations, same way sign language works. It’s easy for me to follow what she’s trying to say.”  He made a face.  “Of course, that could turn every one of our battles into a weird game of Telephone.”

“But it could be worth a shot,” Shiro said.  “In fact, I think we all ought to try to learn to do it.”

“Huh?  Why?” Lance said.

Shiro shrugged.  “Think about it.  We have quite a few explosions going on in our lives.  The closer the explosion, the greater the decibel level.  Shock waves can destroy eardrums or temporarily damage your ability to hear.  Nothing but ringing,” he said, flicking an earlobe.  “There might be a number of times in our lives when we can’t hear anything at all, can’t get to a healing pod to fix the issue, and can’t receive orders until our hearing comes back.  We’d be helpless.  We all need to be able to supplement our comms through our Lions.  And even if we never end up using it, we’d all be bonded more strongly, both to our Lions and each other.  There’s no downside to learning.”

Allura looked excited.  “A splendid idea!  I’ve never seen a bond used this way, but I see no reason why it couldn’t work!  Let’s get started immediately.”  Groans all around.

* * *

Lance found himself in Shir’abi’s hangar again.  All was silent.  He’d removed his hearing aid to hand off to Pidge, who had also taken the damaged one for repair.  She said she’d try to enhance their quality and battery life, not that Lance was totally sure how she’d manage that one.  He could only hope she wouldn’t develop some, like, tiny nuclear reactor and jam it in his ear.  It sounded like something she’d do.

The silence was almost comforting in a way.  Shutting out all unnecessary distractions.  No incessant beeping from machines, no atmospheric hisses through the air circulation systems.  No shuffling paws or squeaks of Allura’s weird little rodent friends.  No echoing of his own footsteps.  The silence was soft, and enveloped all.  Now that he wasn’t in the heat of battle and actively getting _shot_ at with the need to hear his orders, he felt himself calm.

Even though he hadn’t said it, this was also part of why he didn’t really want to permanently fix his hearing.  He liked these moments.  Couldn’t imagine how suffocating it had to be for those who couldn’t just… shut it all out when they needed.

He walked up and put a hand on Shir’abi’s leg.  “Hey, Abi.”

 **You told them** , she said.

“…Yeah.”

**I love how you refuse to listen to me when I say it, but as soon as Hunk says it, you’re all in.**

“Criminey, I’m sorry I didn’t fall over myself to announce my status.”

**Judging by your mood, though, I’m going to guess it went well.**

Lance sucked in a breath.  “Better than ‘well’.  Somehow Shiro and Allura are now super-excited about some kind of training program to get us to hear through our lions.  You think it’ll work?”

 **You hear me now, don’t you?  That’s because we don’t speak out loud.  You don’t need ears to hear our voices, and we don’t need to be flesh and blood to hear each other, or to hear our paladins when you call. And…** her mental voice dipped conspiratorially, **you’ll be better at it than the rest of them because you’re used to it already.**

Lance laughed.  “Oh shit, you’re right.  I’m gonna smoke ‘em sideways.”

**That’s the spirit.**

“So… I guess I’m going to be counting on you even more than usual soon,” he said.

**It’s been a long time since I’ve had a paladin as closely bonded as we are.  I think I quite enjoy being relied upon.  But I must ask you to be wary about being bonded any closer than we already are.**

“Huh?  Why?”

**I can try to avoid it from my end.  Don’t worry too much about it.  I’ll handle it.**

Lance quirked an eyebrow.  “Right, ‘cause that’s not at all creepy ‘n’ cryptic.”

**Go play with your friends now, Lance.  I think the other lions and I ought to have a long conversation and I’m not overly keen on the idea of eavesdroppers.**

Lance sighed.  “A’ight, I guess.  Have fun?”  He turned and left the hangar, gnawing at a thumbnail.  It was odd.  Why…?  He scratched at his scalp and headed towards the common rooms.  Maybe it really was nothing.  He could trust Abi to handle it.  She’d been at this whole gig for tens of thousands of years.  Odds were good she knew what the hell they were doing, even if Lance didn’t.

He’d just have to let her do things her way and hope that it all worked out for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm screwing around because it's fun. Also because I watched way too much damn Escaflowne as a wee bairn.


	3. Reaching Out

Bright and early (relatively speaking – they were in space and not bound to any planetary day/night cycle so they kinda just made times up as they went), all seven of the occupants of the Castle of Lions convened in the telepathy training room.  Allura had the weird-looking headsets all prepped and ready to go, and looked far more excited than she had any right to be.

“All right, paladins, we’ve got a lot of work to do!” she said.  “Today is going to be an exercise in abstract thought!”

Keith squinted at her, looking like he need to go back to bed for another couple of hours.  “This sounds like the sort of thing I could have slept through.  I thought we were supposed to learn how to communicate through our lions?”

“You are!  The Lions don’t think in quite the same way humans do, with a concrete language and alphabet and linguistic nuances.  They think in abstract ways that are highly representative, but impossible to translate into any exact language.  Their spirits are beyond language, and so your minds must be trained to transcend your own linguistic habits in order to comprehend them quickly and efficiently.”

Lance raised a hand.  “I’m already good at this.  Can I go back to bed?”

“No.”

“…You cut me deep, Princess.  Cut me deep.”

Lance had to admit, Pidge did a great job with his hearing aids.  She did some futzing with wires and all that jazz and the sound quality was actually a little better than it had been.  Mostly, he was just grateful to be balanced out again, instead of getting sound only through one ear, like the world’s most obnoxious failing earbud.  Symmetry was infinitely preferable.  How she’d managed it in, like, five hours tops was a mystery.

“All right, guys.  Let’s assume the position,” Shiro said, plopping down on the floor with his legs tucked under him, reaching for the weird headband thingy.

“This is going to be so boring,” Pidge grumbled, but followed suit.

They sat in a circle, feeling solidly ridiculous.

“Lance?  Can you hear the Blue Lion all the time, or only in close proximity?” Allura asked.

He gave a noncommittal shrug.  “I haven’t really noticed a max or minimum distance required.  I don’t think distance matters too much.”

“Good.  Your job today is going to be relaying what the Blue Lion says _exactly_ to the other paladins.  They need to be at a level where they can process that style of communication as quickly as you can.”

Lance sulked a little.  Great.  He was going to be a friggin’ prop today.  Always a favorite.

 _Abi?_ he said in his mind, gently pushing until he found her.  _Want to blather on about useless crap to these losers as fast as you can?_

… **Always**.

And so she did.  Lance decided almost immediately that attempting to relay everything to the other paladins was not going to work.  Abi went too fast.  It was better just to open his mind and let everything else fall away.  If the others really wanted to get good at this, they’d be searching his mind anyway, and they’d find exactly what they were looking for if he let Abi’s rambling be the sole focus.  He didn’t really need to process what she was saying so long as he could perceive that she was speaking at all.

Turned out that she was blathering on about the various exploits (read: shenanigans) of a previous paladin of hers, a great hulking idiot of an Altean with a strange love of cat puns and biomedical engineering.  The first story Abi launched into was when the man’s daughter was chosen to be the Green paladin, and the hissy fit he’d gone into at the realization.  She’d kicked his ass in combat and he’d had no choice but to concede that she was allowed to pilot a giant robot space cat whenever she damn well pleased.

It was nice.  Just listening to Abi talk about her old friends with such fondness was nice.  He vaguely wondered in the back of his head if she’d ever talk that way about him to future paladins.

“Shit, shit, shit – hold on, you gotta stop,” Keith spoke, ruining it.

Lance opened his eyes, scowling.  “What?  Why?”

Pidge yanked off her headset, rubbing at her temples.  “Sorry guys, I’m having a lot of trouble, too.  It goes way too fast to follow.”

Shiro and Hunk looked a little better off.  “I… I think I caught something about a little girl with white hair?  Was she the Green paladin?” Shiro asked.

“Yeah,” Lance said.

Coran’s voice echoed through the speakers.  “I’ve been watching up here, and visuals of what the Blue Lion was saying have been flashing in the hologram ever since you started.  Admittedly, it did go very fast, but I have faith you’ll get this eventually, paladins!”

Keith groaned.  “My head feels like it’s gonna explode.  I’m voting for a water and food break.”

“Seconded,” Hunk said.

“Thirded,” Pidge said.

Lance shrugged.  He could do with some food.

The day passed pretty uneventfully in much the same manner.  Normally, there was a distress beacon disrupting their lives every day, or every other day, but Allura explained that they were in a part of the universe where a number of supermassive black holes had formed following the simultaneous deaths of three stars.  Whatever living, conscious species had existed here before had long since vacated for less dangerous parts of the galaxy.  As such, the Galra had nothing to gain from here, either, and so kept a reasonable distance.  At that, Hunk had raised a hand and asked the very relevant question of whether or not those same black holes could, for example, eat the Castle of Lions.  Allura had laughed that away and said it wasn’t a problem.  No one was sure if she was to be believed on that front or not.

Training was going… well, it was going.  For Lance, it was pretty boring, even if he liked Abi’s stories.  Everyone else got pounding headaches and could barely keep up at first.  By the end of the day, Keith and Pidge had gotten to the point where they were picking up more bits and pieces than before, and Hunk and Shiro could put most of the flashes they got into context.  Slowly but surely, they were getting used to a style of speech that involved nothing but concepts beamed directly into their brains.  Judging by their frustration, though, they had all expected to pick it up faster than this.

“This sucks.  I want to know more about my predecessor, but I’m only getting these tiny little friggin’ soundbytes and it’s killing me,” Pidge groused.  “You think maybe it’s because it’s Blue that we’re having trouble?”

Lance frowned.  “What’s wrong with Abi?”

“No, nothing like that.  I’m saying maybe we’re all just more compatible with our respective lions’ brainwaves.  Or… whatever counts as brainwaves for things that don’t technically have brains.”

Hmm.  Seemed plausible.

“You want to try talking with your own lions tomorrow?  See if that helps any?”

Allura’s voice echoed through the loudspeaker.  “A good plan, paladins.  You’ll largely be communicating with your own lions anyway, so it’s a reasonable idea to practice in a situation as close to legitimate battle as possible.  We’ve made good progress today!  For now, some rest is in order.”

“Amen, sister,” Hunk groaned.

They all headed for the showers.  Lance could only thank the heavens for their odor-retardant underthings, because Alteans didn’t seem to have stinky perspiration and subsequently there was no cool space deodorant.  They were teenagers (except Shiro), and they got pretty rank.  Armpit funk was no one’s friend.

He wrapped up his hearing aids in a hand towel and put them on the counter.  He wasn’t sure if Pidge had made the little suckers waterproof, and if he burst into the ladies’ washroom to ask her while she was naked, he was about 97% certain he would not survive the encounter.  The remaining 3% chance of survival only existed because he had longer legs and stamina great enough to outrun her.

The world fell silent again, and something in Lance calmed.  He twisted the shower dial to the hottest setting, letting it pound into his stiff upper back muscles.  The healing pod might’ve fixed him up, but the tension and leftover inflammation was still a factor.  Sitting still the whole day with his shitty posture hadn’t helped.  Lance could feel little sections of muscle unclench and relax under the hot spray, the water and steam matting his hair to his scalp.

Hm.  He’d been really excited about trying that whole hearing-with-your-lion’s-ears thing today, but that hadn’t happened.  Though… that wasn’t to say it couldn’t.

There was nothing saying he couldn’t experiment, right here in the shower.

Lance remembered his breathing exercises.  Breathe in for a count of seven.  Hold for a count of seven.  Breathe out for a count of seven.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Not the turn of phrase, _actually_ lathering, rinsing, and repeating.  He had to wash his hair sometime.

Shir’abi was there in his mind, seemingly pleased after the day’s efforts.  He got the sense that she enjoyed having people to talk to after ten thousand years’ solitude, even if most of the people she was speaking to had difficulty keeping up.

_ʢôbë?_

**I’m very well, thank you.  Haven’t enjoyed myself this much in many eons.  My brethren are irritated that I’m getting all the attention and nobody cares what they have to say**.  There was something undeniably smug about the statement.

_Well, they’re planning on changing that up tomorrow.  To each, their own lion._

She huffed a little.  **Drat.  I planned on getting to the good stuff tomorrow.  My story has explosions and romance and drama.  Can’t beat that**.

 _Oh yeah?  And how much of it is true?  Y’know, versus embellishment_.

**All of it’s true!  Would I lie to you?**

Lance raised a mental eyebrow.

**Would I lie to you when the results aren’t entertaining?**

Lance grinned.  _I s’pose not._

 **So there, ye of little faith**.

_…I wanted to ask if we can try out that linked-ear thing._

She paused.  Uncertainty flooded their mental link, only to be forced back down so quickly that Lance almost doubted whether or not he’d just imagined it.

 **You can only hear what I hear like this** , she warned.  **You will not be able to hear with your own ears.**

 _It’s fine.  I’m used to that_.

**Then… let us begin.  It’s a difficult process, although perhaps easier for you.  All external distractions must be eliminated.  Most of our exchanges have been on equal ground, with our consciousnesses meeting in the middle.  For this, you must reach the entire distance yourself, through me, to hear what I hear.  I cannot assist you in this, only guide you a little in the right direction.  You sacrifice parts of your own physical form in order to access my perception.**

_So that’s why they blindfolded us on that whole dive test thing?  So we’d have to give up on our real eyes in order to see through yours?_

**Exactly.**

_I’ve been meaning to ask: why exactly did you let me plow into the dirt?  You could have told me to pull up or something._

**Certainly could have, but that wouldn’t have been half as amusing as watching you make a buffoon of yourself.**

_…Why are we friends, again?_

**Concentrate, Lance.**

She was there, swirling in the void.  He could almost reach her.  What did she mean when she said he had to reach _through_ her?  What was that supposed to mean?  Was it kinda literal, or-?

He just decided to wing it.  Maybe plowing his soul headfirst into hers was the correct answer.  She enveloped him entirely, shielding him just like she did in battle, but this time, he wasn’t limited to his tiny physical form.  He could expand, and did.

In that moment, feeling like it was the thing to do, Lance shut up, stopped thinking, and just listened.

Allura’s voice, echoing off the polished metal plates that lined the walls of the Lions’ hangar.  “-not sure how I feel about this.  I will admit, his specialties are becoming very useful, but it may ultimately prove to be a detriment.  I understand he wishes to remain part of a particular cultural subset, but surely he can do that whether he can hear or not.”

Coran’s disembodied voice heaved a sigh over the faint noise of cloth rustling and squeaking.  He must have been polishing the Lions.  “I don’t think that’s the full extent of it, Your Highness.  I think he was trying to say that his deafness is a fundamental part of him.  You can’t go around deciding what parts of people you’ll accept and which ones you’ll alter to suit you.”

“I’m just trying to think of their safety.”

“Well, Lance has managed well enough for now, and we have ideas on how to enhance his natural abilities.  He, and Team Voltron, will be fine.  Have some faith.”

“That’s part of why I worry.  A number of ancient scriptures warned of melding too closely with one’s Lion.  If Lance’s brain function has been permanently altered by his closeness with the Blue Lion… he could cease to be entirely human.  I do not know what effect that would have on him in the long term.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.  I can’t remember the last Blue Paladin having any problems like that.”

“Nor I,” Allura said, sounding like her jaw was tight, a little click as the teeth met.  She was biting her nails, it seemed.  “The scriptures _are_ very old.  They were very old 10,000 years ago.”

“There you go.  Just a bunch of old fogeys whinging in a corner.  Nothing to boil your parsnips over.”  Something began beeping rapidly.  “Wait.  Is that-?”

Lance snapped back to his own body, sucking in a huge breath.  One hand snapped out to slam against the shower stall walls as he stumbled, dizzy.  The water had been going the entire time, steam so thick Lance could hardly see his own feet.  He reached behind him with his free hand and turned off the water, gasping and dripping.

That couldn’t be right.  Abi would have told him if this were dangerous.  She would have stopped him.  Looked out for him, protected him, like she always did.  He trusted her, and that was supposed to be the end of it.

Supposed to be.

Lance had no time to dwell on it.  The klaxons began blaring throughout the castle, red lights flashing angrily from the ceilings.  Allura’s voice crashed over the loudspeakers, “Paladins, to your Lions!  We’ve received a distress beacon a few thousand klicks away from here!  We leave immediately; I’ll brief you fully once communication links are established.  Team Voltron, engage!”

Not that Lance heard a word of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for a thing that was intended to be a oneshot, this fucker got real big real fast


	4. Light on My Toes

Lance dried off at the speed of light and ran like fuck to his clothes.  For what had been purely mind exercises and not physical exertion, the team had decided to wear comfortable street clothes instead of their flight suits – a choice that was now biting Lance in the ass.  Whatever the great big flashing red lights surrounding him meant, he figured it probably wasn’t good, and that he didn’t have time to hunt down his flight suit, change into it, and _then_ make his way down to the hangars.  It wasn’t like he’d never piloted Abi in jeans before.

He got to the hangars in record time, not even having bothered with shoes, socks, or his jacket.  It wouldn’t matter.  Abi was waiting, leaned forward with her mouth open, ready to take him up to the cockpit.  Lance all but slammed himself into the chair, flicking the switch for the manual comms, since his helmet was in his room, where it was doing him a hell of a lot of good.

“We’re good for injection here.”

“Lance!”

“Hey!  Yeah, it’s looking like we’re all set from here.”

Lance cleared his throat.  “Uh, I was kinda in the showers so if there was an announcement about what this is… Yeah, I didn’t hear it.  Can somebody fill me in?”

Hunk answered.  “Dunno.  She said it was an emergency and that we had to get to our Lions and that there was a distress beacon or something, and that was about it.  You didn’t miss much.”

“If this is a drill, I’m gonna be pissed.  I didn’t even get to the body wash portion of my routine.  I was looking forward to smelling like pomegranates and magic.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but this is not a drill,” Allura’s voice cut in.  “From what we can discern both from the information in the distress call and subsequent scans of the area, a Galra battleship is attacking Percedal, a local moon that was harboring known fugitives and suspected Freedom Fighters.  We expect this is retaliation for their insubordination.  The Galra have gone into the moon’s capital, Tristepin, and are burning everything in sight.”

“I thought the Galra didn’t even come to this part of the ‘verse!” Lance said.

“Evidently, that’s what the fugitives heard, too,” Allura said.  “Thought they’d get lucky, I suppose.”

“All right, team.  Lance, Pidge?  I want you on evac of the civilian population, as much as you can manage.  Allura, do we have room?” Shiro asked.

“The castle can hold perhaps a few thousand people temporarily.  Where we would put them afterwards is another matter.”

“Right back where they came from, I imagine,” Keith said.  “As long as the Galra aren’t there burning everything down anymore, there’s no reason they can’t just go back home.”

“Agreed.  We just need them safe behind a particle barrier when all the major fighting is going down.”

“Contacting Tristepin’s major officials now.  With any luck they’ll be ready to leave as soon as we’ve touched down,” Coran said.

“While you’re evacuating, Keith, Hunk, and I will try to hold off enemy fire for as long as possible. We’re strictly on defense.  So long as there’s only the one battleship with pretty much nil in the way of reinforcements expected, we shouldn’t need any fancy tactics, just Voltron,” Shiro said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Keith said.

“Roger that, boss,” Lance said.

“Sounds good here, too,” Pidge said.

“My job is gonna be ‘get shot a lot but don’t die’, isn’t it?” Hunk said.

“Well, if we’ve got a plan, let’s head on out,” Shiro said.  The injection sequence was complete.  Launch in ten, nine, eight, seven-

Ignition.

Five, four, three, two-

Blastoff, suckers.

Lance loved blastoff in zero atmo.  With atmosphere to deal with back on Earth, blastoffs rattled you around like nickels in a jar.  No atmo meant a ride smoother than a fresh jar of peanut butter the whole way.

Abi normally loved it, too.

She was so quiet this time.

“…I’m not angry.  Just confused,” he said softly to the cockpit.

No response.

“You said you’d handle it.  I… I trust you, okay?”

He could feel love, guilt, and gratitude wash over him.  She didn’t really need to say anything else.

“Right now, we’ve got a job to do, so any conversations are just going to have to wait.  But yeah – we’re _going_ to have a conversation.  Just ‘cause I trust that you’ve got it handled doesn’t mean I like being kept in the dark.”

 **Fair enough** , Abi said, her mental presence somehow thinner than he’d ever felt.

Allura had marked Percedal on their nav systems, thankfully.  Otherwise, Lance would have no idea where they were going and would probably shoot right by it.

Hell.  Even from outside their atmo, he could see dark clouds over their marked landing site, presumably from the sheer amount of arson going on down there.  Not for the first time, Lance pondered just how fucked-up Galran culture had to be to raise killers like this.

“We’re almost in position,” Pidge said.

“Good to know,” Shiro said.  “We’re going to try and draw their fire off towards the perpendicular.  We’ll keep an eye on you, but it’s going to be up to you to let us know when the evacuation’s complete.”

“Confirmed,” Lance said.

“Hey, uh… Lance?” Keith said.

“Yeah?”

“Your voice sounds kind of weird.  Distant.  Physically, I mean.”

Lance winced.  Of course they’d notice.  “Uh… don’t mind that.  Don’t worry about my commlinks, I can still do my job.”

“Huh.  Okay, whatever.”

 **I can relay to you whatever the other paladins send over the communications system, seeing as it’s not exactly something you can take with you.  I won’t be able to reply in your stead, though,** Abi said.

“Close enough.  Much obliged,” Lance muttered, hoping the others wouldn’t hear.

They broke the cloud cover pretty quickly, Lance spotting the tell-tale holes that appeared shortly thereafter, marking the entrance of an invisible Pidge.  His Lion might be larger physically, but she’d have to be the one doing the actual ferrying of citizens.  They couldn’t afford to risk the lives of innocents, which meant that Lance and his very-shootable ass were going to end up on decoy duty.  Brilliant.

There was almost nowhere to park their Lions.  It was a bustling town center, and also markedly on fire.  The citizens likely wouldn’t appreciate anyone crushing buildings just to set down.  Wait.  A lake, just inside the city, just large enough for two Lions to land.

“Hang on, Pidge, I’m making a landing site for us,” he said.

“Wait, ‘making’?  The hell does that-?”

The air crackled, the blood roaring in Lance’s ears as he felt energy surge around him.  An arc of pure light stretched down to slam into the lake, freezing it solid in one go.

“Oh.  Yeah, that’ll work,” Pidge said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Don’t get smug.”

“Who, me?  Never.”

“Can you cover me?  I’m seeing a lot of that Galra magenta on the ground.”

Lance shot a glance or two at the city as he set down on his makeshift ice platform.  She was right.  He was in no way surprised – arson was kind of a hands-on thing most of the time, especially considering they probably were still trying to apprehend whatever fugitives they’d come for in the first place.

“I can do cover, yeah.  You’ve got a mayor or whatever to meet up with?”

“Yeah.  I’ve got his location marked for me, so I’m going to beeline on foot.”

“Got it.”  Lance slapped his thigh and the strap-on holster he was never without materialized his bayard, ready to punch a hole in whatever pissed him off today.  He unbuckled his safety harness and more or less ejected himself from Abi, sliding across the smooth ice to the lake rim, starting to shoot the piss out of every Galran soldier who’d run up to see what all the fuss was about with the enormous Blue Lion that shot ice rays.  Hilariously, every time the soldiers attempted to flank him, they’d slip and fall on the ice.  Lance shook his head.  Great ugly morons didn’t know to grip with their toes.  He frowned briefly.  Did the Galra even _have_ toes?  He’d never seen them with their shoes off to know for sure.

 **The Green Paladin is asking why you’re not in your flight suit or wearing a helmet** , Shir’abi said.

Lance kneecapped a couple of soldiers.  “Well tell the little gremlin that considering my prior state of undress, I could have showed up wearing a lot less.”

**I can’t tell her anything at all.  She doesn’t hear my voice.**

“Crying shame, that.”

 **Considering she’d destroy you for your insolence, I suspect this development is a blessing in disguise**.

“Pssht, Pidge can’t even destroy a Jenga tower.”

In lieu of a worded response, Abi just sent him images from his own mind of all the times in the Garrison she’d delivered a sick burn or twelve.

“I- that doesn’t count!” he spluttered.  Pure skepticism in response.  “You’re gross and I have no idea whose side you’re on.”

 **Watch out for the one with the very fluffy ears**.

Lance spun and caught one soldier creeping up on him from the back.  Evidently one of them knew how to walk on ice, after all.  A plasma shot fixed that problem.

 **Pidge has made contact with the leader of the civilians.  They’re returning now with a crowd of roughly a few hundred.  The rest have evacuated on their own safely**.

Lance winced.  “Then camping out here is a bad plan.  Shields up, Abi.”  She complied.  He’d have to jackrabbit as far away from the lake as possible, luring the crowd of soldiers away from the Lions where they’d be loading up the evacuees.  The best option would be to fly off a bit and then engage again, but A) there was still nowhere else to land, B) the soldiers knew perfectly well they couldn’t take on a Voltron Lion with nothing more than a couple of handheld plasma weapons and likely wouldn’t pursue, and C) to get back to his Lion, Lance would have to turn his back to the enemy and risk getting his stupid ass shot in the spine that only just got healed up.  Great.  This whole decoy business was bullshit.

Nimbly, he leapt over a couple Galra troops lying prone and hauled ass like it was on fire over to the nearest building, trying to face the rest of the forces properly and laying down a little paltry cover fire.  Luckily, they took the bait and continued pursuit.  Christ, how many of them were there?  He’d been shooting for what felt like ages, and most of the guys who went down seemed content to stay down.  Still, there had to be another three dozen of them, shouting what were likely offensive things about his parents and the ever-annoying _Vrepit sa_.

“Vrepit _this_ , ähmäʡ!” he yelled, making himself sound as annoying as physically possible.  Thank heavens he got in all that practice with Keith.

Lance found a space that looked… well, it wasn’t on fire ~~yet~~ , so that was a big plus.  It also afforded him a little bit of cover.  As much as he’d thought jumping into action with no armor was a good idea, he was starting to doubt the wisdom of that plan.  Nothing but a ratty tee and jeans.  He hadn’t even been wearing shoes, for Christ’s sa-

He blinked.

He hadn’t been wearing shoes.  Or socks.  His toes were bare to the elements.

Most notable of the elements – ice.

He’d been standing on ice, picking off soldiers for at least fifteen minutes.  His toes should have been screaming at him the whole time, begging him to get on firmer ground.  At the very least, his body heat should have melted the surface enough to make it slippery.  He should have had to change positions multiple times to fix that problem.

And yet, here Lance was, with feet that felt a-okay, not even a little red or sore.  No melted ice, just stayed put for the whole of his time there.  It didn’t make any sense.  The whole thing was deeply unnatural.

His breathing was coming heavier, slight panic running through him.  What was it Allura had said?  ‘Cease to be entirely human’?  It couldn’t be happening for real, could it?  This wasn’t part of it, right?

 _Abi?_ he cried out in his mind.  _Abi, something’s-_

Something slammed into his skull from behind, and Lance dropped like a rock.

In his last moments of consciousness before the darkness took him, Lance was grateful he could still feel pain, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologize both for late chapter and shortness thereof. Do not apologize for cliffhanger, because am in no way sorry. Tough noogies, compadre. Also literally do not ever call someone ähmäʡ if they know what it means. Suffice to say, that shit's fighting words. The sort of thing you only ever scream at someone in traffic because you know you'd never be brave enough to use it without a couple of tons of steel between you and the object of your ire.
> 
> And fun fact: Iranians like pomegranate stuff the same way white girls like pumpkin spice stuff. It's fuckin' EVERYWHERE.


	5. Your Mothers Are Hamsters

Pidge had no idea how Lance had done it, but somehow her path back to the Lions was clear of Galra troops.  Well, mostly.  A fair number were dead or unconscious by the rim of the frozen lake, which she could only assume was his doing.  The refugees skirted the bodies nervously, but followed Pidge anyway.  One or two grabbed Galra blasters, newly paranoid about what the universe had in store for them.

The people of Percedal were a bizarre little race with large heads, bright orange fur, and disproportionately bony limbs.  They almost looked hominid in basic construction, but lacked noses, eyebrows, and fingernails.  Something seemed inherently comical about their appearance, although Pidge couldn’t place just what it was.

Peering around one last time to be absolutely sure it was safe, Pidge deactivated the cloaking tech on her Lion, leading the refugees to the open mouth and ushering them in.  She tapped the bottom of her helmet, manually switching her comms back on.

“Hey, Shiro?  We’re wrapping up here.  Loading up refugees now, and it looks like they might all fit in one run.  Gonna be a tight squeeze, but we’ll manage.  I have no idea how Lance managed it, but he’s basically a golden god.  Zero issues with the evacuation.  Don’t ever tell him I said that.”

“Haha, will do.  Good to hear,” Shiro said.

“Yeah!  Does this mean I can stop getting shot at soon?” Hunk shouted into the mic.  Pidge winced at the sharp feedback.

“You know Lance can hear you over the comms, right, Pidge?” Keith asked.

“No, he can’t.  I saw him nip off right after I got out of my Lion.  He wasn’t wearing his flight suit or helmet – just his street clothes.  Although he was missing his jacket.  And shoes, come to think of it.”

“…You’re kidding me.  The fuck-?”

“He was kind of late getting to the hangars.  And he said he was in the showers.  Maybe he didn’t think he had time to grab his suit?” Hunk suggested.

“I appreciate his sense of urgency, but at the same time, I’d like being able to contact him better,” Shiro said.

Pidge did a quick head count, then closed up the Green Lion’s mouth.  “Paging Castle of Lions.  We’re en route now.  We’ve got 167 refugees, maybe 20 of them in need of medical care.  Nothing super-serious, just burns and smoke inhalation here and there.”

“Ready on our end,” Allura said.

Pidge raised cloaking and thermal shields, preparing to break atmo.  As an afterthought, she used one paw to scratch a deep X into the ice where her lion had sat.  Now, cloaking or no, Lance could be certain that she had made a safe departure whenever he got back from his madcap little shooting spree.  He was probably enjoying the chance to cut loose, the turd.

Eh, he deserved something nice once in a while.  Might help him burn out all that extra energy that made him so annoying the rest of the time.

One slightly bumpy liftoff (she’d been spoiled for the smooth ride of space) and 168 people packed into a giant metal space cat headed for a floating castle fortress.  Never got any less surreal.

A beam of light nearly smacked dead into her, blazing past just left of the Green Lion’s head.  Pidge swore and swerved, for a moment panicking that her cloaking was malfunctioning.  Then she realized.

“Uh… guys?  Any particular reason a _tractor beam_ from the cruiser would be focusing on Tristepin?” she asked.

“Wait, a what?!”

“Shit.”

“Pidge, get back to the Castle.  Keith, Hunk, you keep the cruiser as busy as you can.  I’ll see if I can’t fly close enough to get visuals on what the hell they’re beaming up,” Shiro said.

Pidge swallowed around the lump in her throat that told her she already knew.  “Okay.”

Shiro’s heartbeat pulsed in his own throat, hard to breathe around.  No.  It couldn’t be.  They were probably just beaming aboard their own guys on the ground after realizing that there were no more Percedalish citizens to terrorize.  Perfectly logical explanation.

Except for the part where the Galra lived by _Vrepit sa_ – Success or Death.  No Galra officer would dare return without getting what they came for.  They’d never just shrug and go about their business upon having their prey snatched out from under them, unless…

Unless they’d found better prey.

No.  He couldn’t think like that.  Visual confirmation.  He just needed to see with his own eyes, and then he’d be able to breathe again.

Shiro edged closer and closer to the tractor beam, wary of getting caught up in it.  Where was its cargo?  The beams were pretty speedy, so maybe they were already further up the line?

There.  A collection of black dots up the line, making their way back to the cruiser.  Shiro slammed the controls forward and punched it.  They were nearly back to the ship already.

Black opened up a video feed to the right of the front viewport, zoomed in for clarity.  He wouldn’t catch up in time to do anything to stop it, but he could at least know what or who was being transported.

A zoomed-in camera only told him so much.  Black and purple, black and purple, the morbid glow of magenta that adorned all Galra weapons, nothing unexpected there.  But no, a tiny dash of blue, brown, and white.

Lance.

Shiro couldn’t stop the choked cry tearing its way out of his throat.

“Shiro?  Shiro, what’s wrong?!  Talk to me,” Keith yelled.

“…It’s Lance,” he said.

“What?”

“They got Lance.”

Hunk snarled into the comms like a feral animal.  “No, they fucking don’t!”  Even from this distance, Shiro saw the Yellow Lion head straight for the source of the tractor beam with the full intent of destroying it.

“ _No!_ ” Shiro and Pidge screamed at once.  Hunk faltered.

“Hunk, you can’t break the beam!  If you do, Lance will be floating in space, and he doesn’t have his helmet, or his flight suit, or a jetpack, or any air supply at all!  You’d be killing him instantly,” Pidge shouted, voice shaking.

“Then what the fuck do we do – just let them take him?!”

Allura cut in.  “That’s exactly what we’ll have to do.  Break the beam the instant Lance is aboard.  Try to identify the chemical vapor trails.  Every fuel source is slightly different on a chemical composition scale – we can track exactly which ship has him if they try to run.  But right now, we can’t risk killing Lance and we can’t risk the Galra taking the Lions.  Wait for the beam to go out, and then break it.”

“But-!”

“Do it,” Shiro said.  He barely recognized his own voice.  “We’re not abandoning him.  We’re getting him back.  This isn’t over.”

“Oh yeah?  And what are they going to do to him in the meantime while we’re parked on our-“

“Hunk.”  Keith was quiet.  The fear was in his voice too, but softer.  More controlled.  The only one not actively losing his shit.

The tractor beam flickered out, and Hunk threw himself at the machinery, screaming his frustration into the black.

Keith shot back down towards the surface.  “Shiro.  We’ve got to get Blue.  We can’t leave her here.”

Shiro didn’t answer, but followed anyway.  He was numb all over.

It shouldn’t have felt this inconsequential.  It shouldn’t have felt familiar.

It shouldn’t have been Lance.

\--

Lance awoke with a steel-toed boot to the solar plexus, his body seizing up.

“Rise and shine, little Blue brat,” a voice growled above him.

“Rude,” Lance muttered, more to himself than anybody.  The next kick nailed him in what was probably the spleen, not that he knew where the spleen was supposed to be or even what it did.  He let loose an involuntary groan.  Today was turning out to be even shittier than normal.

A clawed hand curled around his shirt, dragging him up.  Belatedly, he realized his wrists and legs were bound together with some kind of rough… ribbon, it seemed.  It didn’t feel like cloth or rubber or plastic, but whatever it was, it was oddly comfortable aside from the part where he was immobilized.

“We’d hoped to get your Lion instead of you, useless as you are, but perhaps you’ll be fit to lick a whore’s boot by the time I’m done with you,” the soldier purred.

His face had quite a bit of fluffy fringe on it, his ears curled in like a Scottish fold.  Lance couldn’t help but snicker at the mental comparison.  The hand relocated itself to his throat, slamming him into an unforgiving metal wall.

“I would love nothing more than to spill your organs all over the floor, and very little is really going to stop me from doing that.  Do not test me, _child_ ,” he said.

Lance flailed, trying to get a solid purchase on the ground, or at least some air.  Breathing would be great.  Anytime now.  Aaaaanytime.

The soldier let him drop with a thud to the floor, then crouched down to be directly in his personal space again.

“You will tell us where Voltron will strike next,” he said.

Lance coughed, sucking in as much air as he could.  The Galra seemed to be used to the thinner atmosphere of their home planet and emulated that on their ships, because it didn’t feel like there was enough oxygen to replenish his bloodstream as quickly as there had been on Arus, or just the ambient atmosphere of the Castle of Lions.

“Now,” the soldier said, grabbing one shoulder and pressing a claw into a pressure point just below his collar bone.  Lance gasped and spluttered.

“…Okay.  I… I’ll tell,” he mumbled.

The soldier looked horribly smug.  “Where is Voltron headed next?”

Lance looked up at him with the biggest, most innocent eyes he could muster, and said with a straight face, “Your mom’s bedroom.”

He could see the gears turn.  Watched the soldier’s face contort into a snarl.  The hand pulled back and slammed into Lance’s face, sharp metal knuckle guards cutting deep into the flesh of his cheek, blood dripping down his jaw.  Lance was thrown to the side, catching himself with an elbow and gasping.

“You should watch your mouth,” the soldier growled.

“Yeah, and you should be digging through a dumpster for ham scraps like the six-piece Chicken McNobody you are, but we’re both going to be disappointed,” Lance said.  “Get me your manager.  Or commanding officer, whatever.  We both know you’re not going to be enough.  Come see me again when you’ve got tougher skin.”

His voice came out strong and clear.  Whatever the soldier saw in Lance’s eyes, unwavering, unblinking… it was enough to unsettle him.

“…You’d be better off telling me now than forcing me to resort to _her_ ,” the soldier said.  “She will ravage your mind, destroy it.  Shred it to pieces.  I’ve watched the very strongest of us crumple beneath her hands.  You will regret not cooperating.”

“I regret a lot of things, but telling you to shove it up your ass isn’t gonna be one of them,” Lance said.

The soldier’s eyes narrowed.  “So be it.  Remember: you chose your fate.  The Druids will be pleased to have so useful a plaything.”

Lance took care not to show it on his face, but it sent a tiny spark of fear through him.  The Druids were responsible for Shiro’s arm.  The Druids were responsible for the horrible, mutilated lifeforms that had been crafted into mindless weapons that had plagued Team Voltron since… practically the beginning.  There was little doubt one of their number could break him, turn him into something ruined and broken.  But hey, he was just biding time until his crew came to pick his ass up.  This had been a podunk bumfuck part of the galaxy, with just one dumb little battle cruiser by its lonesome.  There was no way they’d have someone important like Druid onboard, which meant they’d have to fly all the way out here, and that could take ages.  He had time.

Lance took one final kick to the gut, curling over and wheezing in pain.  The soldier gave him one last, almost pitying look, then left, locking the cell after himself.

“ _Mãmãnãtûn mûshé bŏzŏrgän!_ ” he called cheerfully after the soldier’s receding back.  Another prisoner down the way growled.  “Not you, buddy.  I’m sure _your_ mother is lovely.”

\--

“Esteemed Druid High Priestess Haggar,” he began, “we have captured a Paladin of Voltron.  We are in a remote part of the galaxy, far from reinforcements, and the rest of the Paladins are sure to move on us quickly.  If we wish to extract information from the prisoner, it must be done with a swiftness we do not have the means to achieve here.”

She raised a hand on the monitor.  “Worry not.  I will come.  Send me your coordinates, and a warp transfer can be arranged.  If you are doubting your ability to interrogate him so quickly, he should prove to be of some interest to me, and to the Empire.”

“ _Vrepit sa_ ,” he said, kneeling, before tuning out of the feed.

It wouldn’t be long now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up buttercup.


	6. Nerd Temperature

Lance hadn’t expected them to come so soon.  Wasn’t it supposed to take ages to get anywhere in this part of the galaxy?  There was no way they had a Druid on board a ship in the boondocks.

Then he remembered that they were creepy witches and that applying logic to magic never seemed to work out too well.

Five armed guards (he was a little proud that they were taking him this seriously – if they thought they needed five guys with big guns just to make sure a floppy little wheat noodle of a boy like him stayed down, it was a proud moment) burst into his cell the instant he began nodding off, flashing lights in his eyes and disorienting the shit out of him.  Gloved hands grabbed his arms roughly and yanked him up, Lance giving a little yipe from the sudden reminder that yes, _everything_ was bruised.  They cut through the substance binding his legs together and pushed him out into the hallway.

“The Druid High Priestess will see you now,” one growled, almost smug.  Lance recognized him as the solider from before.  Probably.  Sometimes it got hard to tell them apart when all of their facial features were obscured by thick purple fur.

“She couldn’t’ve made a house call?” he whined, and got a knee to the gut for his troubles.

Lance lay down limply, forcing them to drag his ass all the way across the ship.  It made everything hurt worse, but it counted as a little victory.

 _Abi_ , he called silently.  _Abi, can you hear me?_

**Lance!**

His mind was flooded with images that even Shir’abi herself didn’t seem to be able to control well.  Hunk screaming.  Allura giving orders.  Shiro and Keith attaching tethers to her and lifting her back to the Castle of Lions, safe from the Galra troops.  A ship entering a warp gate.  Pidge crying silently in the Lions’ hangar, staring up at Shir’abi.  Shiro’s eyes, carefully blank, face unnaturally pale.

Above it all, the overwhelming question of, **Are you okay?**

_Nothing a healing pod won’t fix.  My guys are coming for me, right?_

He could taste her bitterness on his own tongue, acrid.  **I don’t know.  I’ve been shut away.  I hear nothing.  I see nothing.  I know only what you do.  Please just stay-**

He never found out the end of that sentence.  Evidently, they’d finally arrived where they were meant to take him, and chucked him in facing backwards, slamming the door behind him.

 _Abi?_ he thought.  Nothing.  Fear spiked in his stomach.

“Abi?”  Out loud made no difference.  This had never happened before.  Even when all other sound fell away, Shir’abi’s voice was the one thing that remained.  Always.

So what the hell-?

Although perhaps at the moment the question was more _where_ the hell.

At first glance, the room was stark white, a blinding change from the dim gunmetal-and-magenta interior of the rest of the ship.  Once Lance’s eyes had adjusted, he could discern faint twining geometric lines of indentation along the smooth walls and floor.  What they were meant to spell out or accomplish, he had no idea.  They looked kind of nice but the Galra didn’t strike him as aesthetic-based interior decorators.  The room itself was rounded, hemispherical.  There was no visible lighting, but Lance could see everything clearly, so did that mean… the walls themselves were glowing?

“I have been waiting, Blue Paladin.”

Lance didn’t even have the chance to turn and see who was talking.  An invisible force grabbed him and threw him bodily across the room, slamming him down to the floor on his back.  His arms were forcibly ripped out of their bonds, the bones in his wrists shrieking with the strain of it.  Newly freed, all four limbs sprang apart, leaving spread-eagled on the ground.  New bonds quickly rose from the floor, strapping him down more than was really necessary.  One even curled around his throat, pulling tight enough to leave him gasping for air.

“Who-?”

“I am Haggar, human child.”  The air above him rippled, and somehow she phased into existence.  God.  He’d known the Druids were some hideous old crones, but this was pushing it.  “Up we go,” she said.

With that, a portion of the floor perfectly matching his outline (some part of him morbidly imagined the chalk outlines in cop procedural shows) rose up, forming a table of sorts onto which he was bodily pinned.  So _that’s_ what all the little lines on the walls and floor were.  Everything in the room was customizable.  Handy.  Also freaky as shit, but mostly handy.

“Wasn’t expecting you for a while,” Lance choked out.  Haggar’s face wrinkled up a little more, and she flicked a wrist.  The bonds around his throat relaxed just enough that he could breathe again.  She better not have been hoping for a thank you, because she wasn’t getting one.

“Your magic will not work while you are within this room, Paladin,” she said.

“I can’t do magic anyway.”

She smirked.   “Foolish child.  You’ve been doing it since the day you first heard your Lion.”

“That’s not magic, that’s… freaky space friendship shit.”

“Mm,” she said, not paying the slightest bit of attention.  What might have been a console had popped up out of the ground (Lance could only see so much out of the corner of his eye, and the bonds were tight enough still that trying to turn his head to see better might result in him strangling himself – an activity he wanted to avoid just in general).  “…Yavosh did not speak of this.”

“Yavosh?”  Suddenly it clicked.  The soldier who had first interrogated him.  Had that been his name?  Had Lance even _known_ the guy’s name?  “Dude, that’s hilarious.”

“…I will regret asking, but why?”

“Yavosh means slow.  Well, slowly.  Adverb form.  It’s funny ‘cause he’s slow in the head.  Sorry.  Not important. Continue.”

“I’d agree with your assessment.  He told me we had a _human_ Paladin.”

Whatever blood remained in Lance’s face drained.  “I… what?”  His voice was so much tinier than he’d meant it to come out.  It didn’t matter; she ignored him and set about tinkering with whatever the screen on the control panel showed her.

No.  This was psychotic.  He couldn’t be anything but human.  He’d lived on Earth his whole life.  Ate, drank, slept, and breathed like everyone else.  Nobody went from being human to something else overnight.  It had only been what, half a year since they’d first formed Voltron?  That was barely a sneeze on the cosmic scale of things.  He still looked the same, felt the same…

No, that wasn’t quite true.  His feet from earlier.  He’d been standing, barefoot, on solid ice, and he’d never felt the cold at all, never melted any of the ice with his own body heat, never showed any physical signs of onset frostbite that might account for the numb feeling.  Numb feet hardly seemed a symptom of _otherworldliness_ though.  Some Galra broad was just jumping to conclusions, and Lance was better off ignoring that tripe.

“I was informed you have access to information the Empire needs.  Voltron has always been ours.  You are just thieves.  Insects.  We will crush you in due time, but of course, the sooner the better.  And your mind is full of such lovely secrets, just waiting for harvest.  I must confess, I have always wanted to delve into a Paladin.  Alas, I only ascended to my station eighty solar cycles after the defeat of Altea.  The Lions vanished, the Paladins perished, and I have been bored senseless ever since.”  She paused.  “Well, not quite.  I’ve found myself a few pet projects here and there.  One must keep one’s skills sharp.”

“Like you fucking did to Shiro?  That was just for funsies?  Cut off arms just to stay in practice, do you?” Lance spat.  He couldn’t believe… She had a lot of goddamn nerve.

Haggar stared at him briefly, expressionless.  “Ah.  The Champion.  The prototype needed to be tested on a lower lifeform before its approval in clinical trials.”

Lance snarled and jerked against his bonds.  He was going to rip her throat out with his fucking teeth if need be.  “You’re the only lower lifeform on this floating feculent clusterfuck.”

“Hm.  That’s nice.”

Wow.  No reaction.  Lance had been spoiled for Keith’s over-the-top offended-ness.

“Human minds are so much easier to search than ones like yours.  Human minds are not shielded with magic, for one thing,” she muttered, almost more to herself than anyone else.  She sounded like someone complaining about gas prices going up.  “Harbor ye no hope, Paladin.  You are better protected, but not by much.  I will triumph, as I always have.”

“Lotta confidence for someone who’s never given one of us a go,” Lance said.  “Hey, what can I say?  I’ve got a reputation for being too hot to handle.”

“The opposite, really,” she said.  He blinked.  Huh?  “Our scanners indicate your core body temperature is at 286.”

“Holy fuckballs!  Humans are normally around 98!”

She squinted at him.  “No, humans are around 310.”

They looked at each other for a minute before it dawned.  “Ohhhh, Kelvin.  Nerd temperature.  Never mind.”

Lance did a little mental math.  She’d said he was at 286 K.  Minus 273.15 was… what, like 12?  13-ish?  Room temperature was around 22˚C, and 12 was barely more than half that.

Even corpses were room temperature.  Somehow, Lance was actually _colder_.

He should be dead.  He should have noticed something like this.  He felt completely normal.  If he could survive being that cold internally, just how cold could he be before it began to affect him?  Would anything?  Was heat more of an issue now?

Haggar dragged his attention back to current issues quickly enough.  “The more I see of you, the more I think I ought to postpone my spelunking session.”  The translators must have been fucking up, because there was no way she said the word ‘spelunking’.

“I support this plan.  I support it a lot,” Lance said.

“I shall consult His Eminent Majesty,” she said.

“I no longer support this plan.”

She was not listening.  Her bony Dementor fingers swirled something around on the keypad, and a screen unfolded from the far wall.  A holographic projection flickered into place.

Zarkon.  She’d honestly Skyped _Zarkon_.

He was so fucking dead.

“Haggar, what is the meaning of… Ah.  I see.  Did the prisoner have anything of note?”

“I thought it best to contact you first.  A bonded Paladin is a rare creature, after all.”

…Had Lance imagined it, or had Zarkon sucked in a tiny breath?  It might have been the microphones (or whatever alien tech passed for microphones) picking up background chatter.

“You are certain of this?”

“He freely and ignorantly survives conditions no human could.  He sought telepathic assistance from the Blue Lion without hesitation or pause.  His mind is shielded, albeit weakly.  It seems the logical conclusion.”

Zarkon ground his teeth together.  “It has not been long enough a time.  These infants have barely been Paladins for more than a few cycles of the moons.  It takes _rotations_ to form the necessary mental fortifications to facilitate a bond.  Even hundreds of rotations.  It’s not possible.”

“Told ya I was still human, lady,” Lance said.

“Silence,” Zarkon said, as if Lance had taken a piss on his favorite hydrangeas.  Geez, what had crawled up this guy’s ass?  Lance made a mental note to ask Allura.  Clearly, they knew a lot about the whole Paladin business, and about Voltron, so maybe they used to be allies of the Alteans or something before Zarkon pulled a full-on Sauron and betrayed them all.  If anyone might know what bees were in the alien warlord’s bonnet, she would.

“Your Majesty, I respectfully disagree.  Allow me to demonstrate.”

“Wait, what?  ‘Demonstrate’?  Demonstrate wha-?”

Lance didn’t get the full sentence out.  Electricity coursed through the whole of his body, fizzing along every tiny nerve and axon, overloading everything.  He was on fire.  He had to be, quite literally, on fire.  His body jerked involuntarily, screams tearing from his throat as he thrashed in such tiny increments as he could.  He couldn’t get away.  Couldn’t move.  Felt himself shaking apart and falling into fire.

And somehow, eons later, it was over.  Leftover shocks pulsed through him, trembling and gasping there on the table.  Tears had leaked from his eyes involuntarily.  He’d have been humiliated if he weren’t so grateful that he’d managed to keep control of his bladder.  The little victories.

“That was three times the amount of electricity necessary to kill a human his size,” Haggar said.

Lance heard most of it.  His stupid hearing aids were fritzing out.  They hadn’t exactly been designed with this sort of punishment in mind.  As such, the sound went in and out and it was the best Lance could do to make out every other word.  Lip-reading was useless when the translator usually picked up the slack anyway, making every lip movement look like a bad Godzilla dub.

“…He can’t be,” Zarkon murmured.

“Your advised course of action, sire?” Haggar asked.

Something hardened in Zarkon’s face, and it look Lance a moment to realize it had honestly been soft before, if only for an instant.  “Nothing changes.  We need information.  Use any means necessary to obtain it.  Report to me when you have finished.  If you cannot break him, find a use for him.”  And with that, the transmission ended.

And then those soulless eyes were trained on him again, and he couldn’t stop himself from trembling.  Was she going to do it again?  He didn’t think he could handle it if she did.

Something shorted out in his left hearing aid and he yelped, twitching.

“Hm?  What’s this?”  She reached over and plucked it clean out of his ear.  Her eyes grew wide and she chuckled.  “And you ignorant fools gave me the impression that humans did not try to improve their pitiful species by mechanical means.”  She bent over him and smiled, her lips cracked and bleeding, her breath fetid.  “You’re _defective_ ,” she whispered.  “Even by human standards.”

“Solid detective work,” Lance managed to get out.  “Now if you could go discover a toothbrush, that’d be the bomb-dot-com.”

“You’re quite fortunate, you know.  Sensory deprivation enhances your natural magic, your communication with the forces of the universe.  To have a sense taken from you is wonderful fortune.  I am no longer surprised that you have managed to bond so effectively with your Lion in so short a timeframe.  I have been blind all my life, and it has only made me stronger.”

“Some fucking bullshit is what that is.”

Her mouth tightened, the smile gone.

Lance continued.  “It’s not a good thing.  It’s not a bad thing.  It’s just a goddamn character trait.  Same as having red hair or blue eyes or six toes – it doesn’t matter.  Only people with a complex about it feel the need to make it into something it’s not, so stop using me as fakey-justification for your misguided misanthropy.  My being deaf doesn’t make me any less or more of a fuck-up, just like you being blind doesn’t make _you_ better than the intern who washes out your gross old lady bedpan every morning.  Sit on that and rotate,” he hissed.

She sniffed.  “We shall see about that.”  A small smile.  “Or at least you will.”

* * *

Haggar reopened the communications line to the capital.

“Your Majesty, my work is complete here.  The Blue Paladin knows nothing of use.”

“Then you are reporting a failure?”

“Never, sire.  If we cannot discover where the rest of the Voltron Paladins are, we shall simply have to draw them out the hard way.”

“Do it.  Do not fail me, for the glory of the Galra Empire.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter has an illustration and for once I don't hate my own art.


	7. Spider Silk

Lance was frozen.  Well, in more ways than one, if Druid technology was to be trusted.  No, that wasn’t funny.  Nothing about this was funny.

He broke.

He wasn’t supposed to do that.

He’d felt so confident.  After all the bullshit the bullies put him through in middle school, he figured he could take anything they threw his way and dish it back twice as good as he got, and for the most part, that had been true.  Lance was the guy who could roll with the punches.

What she’d given him wasn’t a punch.

She’d forced something down his throat, horrible and gloppy that made him long for the gross foot/hot dog taste of nunville.  It burned the whole way down as he’d thrashed against his bonds to absolutely no effect.  At first, nothing had happened.  Whatever it had been supposed to do, Haggar had deemed sufficient after maybe ten minutes.

And then she’d reached into his mind and raked her jagged nails through it, ripping and shoving everything to the side in search of her true target.

Hadn’t she said his mind was shielded?

But then, she also said no magic worked in this room, and brain shields sounded like magic.

Maybe she just meant that he couldn’t use magic to talk to anyone outside of the room.  Like Abi.

Like Team Voltron, back in the Castle of Lions.

Lance had known from the start that there was no real way to predict Voltron’s movements, even being himself a part of Voltron.  They drifted more than anything else.  They answered distress beacons.  They dropped by places Allura remembered.  They followed tiny leads that might have anything to do with Pidge’s family.

Lance shuddered in his cell.  Thank God she hadn’t been looking for information about the other Paladins.  If they found out that somewhere in the galaxy, they already had such valuable hostages as the Holt family… There was no force, no weapon, no magic that could keep them safe.  If Lance had been responsible for their tortures or deaths, he’d probably just eject himself out of an airlock and pray for a quick death.  Maybe let Pidge push the button herself.  Give her some closure.  His fingers were numb and shaking just thinking about it.

If the other Paladins found out just how close Lance had come to fucking up absolutely everything, they’d never forgive him.  There were some things you could get over.  Betrayal on this scale wasn’t one of them.

It was just too cruel to think that the only reason nothing truly horrible had happened was because Haggar had a one-track mind.  She had gone looking for battle plans, not intel on the Paladins, or the Castle defenses, or… Earth.  The Galra could have destroyed their entire home planet if only Haggar had had the presence of thought to check and see where it was.  Still could.  Nobody said that little session of theirs was the last one.

His family, and Hunk’s.  Pidge’s mom, the one person in that whole fucking family who hadn’t tasted the cruelty of the Galra personally.  No breaks for the Holts, and wasn’t that the shittiest luck.  His own siblings.  The twins, a picture of well-behaved children who were in actuality on the warpath, his mother close behind with a spray bottle screaming profanities in her native Persian.  His father hiding behind the ficus because that was literally the only safe place in the house.  All ‘cause Lance couldn’t fucking keep his mouth shut.

Maybe if he’d been better at this magic trash, he could build mental shielding that _mattered_.  Whatever had been in that sludge he was forced to drink probably weakened him or something.  Negated his ability to resist her.  But no, he’d firmly denied that he could be anything but fully human, operate magic on his own, any of that mystic voodoo mumbo-jumbo crap.  Crap that might save his fucking planet if he could learn how to use it properly.

Too late for that, in all likelihood.  Closing the barn door after the horses escaped and all that.

Unless the guys could swoop in and grab his ass before it could come to that.

Or, failing that, they could just, like, nuke the whole ship.  No point in risking themselves just to fetch him.  Shiro probably shouldn’t ever see the inside of a Galra prison cell again, even as part of a jailbreak.  They’d get over it in a couple weeks.  Sooner for the Alteans.

Abi would miss him.  How sad was that?  That the person who might miss him the most wasn’t a person at all.

She was there, insistent, at the back of his mind.  Lance just didn’t want to talk.  Two hours of moping time.  He didn’t ask for much, especially considering the last time he’d wanted to head into a good moping session, Hunk had intervened and then chucked him in a healing pod.

Lance leaned back against the cold metal paneling of the cell walls.

…Cell walls.

Cell biology.

Plant cells had cell walls, but not animal cells.

Well, if he wasn’t human…

Sad little bean sprout.

Caked in dirt, longing for the sun.

Bean sprout.

Aaaaaaand Lance was officially bored out of his fucking mind.

There had to be something to _do_ around this hellhole.

Lance scooted his butt over to the door and kind of wedged himself in the corner as a means of getting the leverage to stand up.  It was harder than it looked, considering the bindings that had been put back on his arms and legs.

The tiny little window in the door showed very little of the surrounding area, but Lance had gotten a fair look at it when the Galra thugs had dragged him off the Druid.  Everything in this stupid ship was numbered on a plate just outside the door, a lot like how most public buildings on Earth had Braille plates by the sides of each door.  The numbers didn’t seem to be there for accessibility purposes, and it looked like they were all almost comedic in length.  There had to be at least fifteen numbers in that shit.  Even UPCs didn’t go to that kind of effort.

At least the Galran numbering system was easier to decipher than Altean.  Pretty close to Japanese numbering.

And then it dawned on him.

Shiro would have noticed that in his time on a ship just like this one.  If Galra soldiers as a whole were as anal retentive as this one ship out in the boondocks, every ship would have the same numbering designating each room.  Every ship would have a directory and probably a map every three feet, since it would be nigh impossible to remember the numbers for every single room off the top off your head.  It was hardly the model of efficiency if no one could respond to a threat because no one could find the armory in a crisis.  Or a bathroom.  The directory likely wouldn’t indicate specifics like name designation, but if the numbering system was in place, it had to have a reason, a logic.  Maybe all prisons started with a seven or something.

If anyone were to mount a rescue (because the misfit toys that comprised Team Voltron were just sore enough losers to give that suicide mission a fair shake), they’d need to find him quickly and efficiently.  What would help better than handing them the key to any map they’d find?

Lance had to squint and strain the hell out of his gangly neck, but he could just make out the numbers on the plate beside his cell’s door.  Fuck, the thing was long.  Never mind fifteen numbers, there were at least twenty.

71024298457006716381008375.

7102429457006716381008375\.  Wait, no. He’d forgotten the eight. Goddamn it.

71024298457006716381008375.

…He was literally never going to remember this shit, was he?  This wasn’t _The Court Jester_ , and he couldn’t make up any jaunty little rhymes as a mnemonic device.

Boots clanged from around the corner, drawing closer, and Lance tripped over himself trying to get back to his far corner.  He settled for rolling like his ass was on fire and made it just in time.

“Get up, trash,” the soldier said, leveling a blaster with Lance’s eyeball.  Lance didn’t hear a word of it (his one remaining hearing aid had finally up and died from electrical overload, it seemed), but the blaster was sort of unmistakable.

“I would, except…” he wiggled there, a worm on the ground, to prove his point.  Sad little bean sprout.  The soldier hauled him up by his arms, nearly ripping them out of their abused sockets.

And then Lance realized that all the equipment he had with them implied that this wasn’t going to be a field trip.

Special lighting rigs and a camera.  They were going to make a friggin’ demands video.  This was so surreal.

Wait, no, comedy aside, this was his chance.  He was going to get exactly one shot at communicating with the Castle of Lions.  He had to make it count.

The Galra soldier stood behind him, clearly saying something to the camera.  Making eye contact and everything.

Lance would never get out that whole big long awful number if he tried to speak it.  He smiled.  He’d never needed speech before, and he didn’t need it now.  Hunk would get the message.  Carefully, positioning one hand in the soldier’s blind spot just under his own chin, Lance began forming the signs, ring finger curling in.  He really hoped he’d gotten that shit memorized correctly.  One at a time.

Somehow, Lance got through the whole thing.

…He couldn’t leave it at just that.

Any sign he could do with his hands tethered together with limited horizontal movement.  Anything.

He breathed deeply.  Thumb under chin.  Flat palm outwards.  Thumb up, pulling in to meet his other hand.  Fist palm-towards-self, small circle.

They’d understand.  Most of it, anyway.  The important bits.

And a hand wrapped around Lance’s wrist and he tensed in shock.

His head whipped around to look up at the soldier (why were all of them so fucking tall?) to find the creature already grinning down at him with a feral look.  His mouth was moving.  Clearly saying something he was enjoying saying a great deal, which meant that Lance was most likely in for a world of pain in a minute.

…With a camera still rolling.  This was going to be awful, wasn’t it?

The soldier yanked him around and slammed him up against the wall, his teeth colliding painfully with the solid metal.  Ugh, he could taste blood.  His bonds were cut through, offending hand yanked up, and positioned flat against the wall.  No.  No _nononono, he needed that hand-!_

The blaster came up, and went off.

Lance couldn’t hear himself screaming, but he was pretty sure everyone else in the fucking ship did.

* * *

Silence reigned in the Castle of Lions, occupants crowded around the bridge comms, frozen in shock.

Lance had dropped out of the frame, only a dark red smear across the wall to show he’d ever been there.  Shiro was shaking and dead white in the face.  The others weren’t much better off, lack of past trauma notwithstanding.

Allura was the first to speak, her voice chalky and crumbling.  “…What was he saying?”

Hunk took a shuddering breath.  “I… I’m not totally sure.  A bunch of numbers, and then…”

“And then?”  Keith’s voice sounded hungry.

“He said, ‘It’s not your fault.  I’m sorry’.”

* * *

Lance sat in the corner, too woozy to stand from blood loss.  This was some bullshit.  He just wanted to go home.

His body didn’t feel right.  More holes in it now, of course.  Bandaged since the incident.  Poorly.  The Galra must have had healing pods a lot like the Alteans did (Lance refused to think of the possibility that they culled the weak by refusing to treat any wounds), and thus had little experience with treating wounds by hand.  That, or they just didn’t give a shit.  Both equally likely.

Huh.  Maybe the feeling of his soul slowly leaving his oddly-cold corpse was something that should bother him.  He wasn’t dead.  He wasn’t going to die.  Not from one little (big) hole through his right hand.

**_Bačéyé mahn_**.

Lance sat up, shock running through him.  Shir’abi’s voice rang louder in his head than it ever had.

_Abi?!_

**You.  Hurt.  They hurt… they hurt you**.  Over and over, a cold rage emanating from the words.

_It’s fine, Abi.  Nothing I can’t handle_.

**Nothing you should _have_ to handle**.

_Doesn’t matter.  Who cares?_

**…I do.  Hunk does.  Shiro does.  Keith does.  Pidge does.  The Princess.  Coran.  Your family.**

_And I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter.  Apparently I’m like a weird kind of immortal now.  Pretty thoroughly tested, too._

Shir’abi was silent but ghostly echoes of shame, surprise, and fear crossed the bond anyway.

_You knew.  You knew this would happen and you told me you had it under control.  Was that a lie?_  Lance asked.  He couldn’t drum up the energy to be mad about it.  It was just an honest question.

**…I thought I could keep it at bay.  At least until you were ready.  Besides, I never considered that the bond might already be underway.  Normally, one must perform ritual blood sacrifice in order to bond their lives to me, or to any Lion.**

_Ritual blood sacrifice?  Getting into the kinky shit now, aren’t we?  Still… oh.  I think I know when that might have been a thing._

**You do?**

_Remember when I took my helmet off in the cockpit and crash-landed into your dashboard with my face?_

The lightbulb went on.  **Ohhhhhhhhhh**.

_Yeah.  Blood was kinda everywhere ‘cause head wounds bleed for-fucking-ever.  Also I might’ve wiped some of it off on there so the guys wouldn’t see me walk out of my Lion with gross crunchy red gunk all over my face.  That’s probably bad for my pores or something._

**That would do it.**

_So.  We’re… bonded, whatever that means._

Abi did the mental equivalent of sucking in a breath.  **Bluntly, it means my magic and life force are now tied to yours.  For so long as I live, you cannot die.  Ice forms the root of your power now.  You no longer will require food or sleep.**

_…Dude, you just named my two favorite things._

**I didn’t say you had to give them up.  You just don’t need them to survive anymore.**

Lance looked down at his bandaged hand.  _But I can still get injured just fine, huh?_

**Yes.  Unfortunately.  Most injuries should have fewer long-term repercussions, though.  Your body should heal faster than normal, although not anywhere close to the speed the Princess can produce with a healing pod**.

_Makes sense_ , Lance said.  _What I don’t get is why all the old Paladins of Voltron seem to have snuffed it if they’re all supposed to be immortal_.

**They weren’t.  Well… most of them weren’t.  None of them performed bonding rituals.  They weren’t supposed to.  The records were deliberately destroyed tens of thousands of your years ago.  Consider the making of Voltron in the first place:  the strength of Voltron comes not from its weapons, but the collaboration of multiple minds, all seeking the same end.  A fusion of wills, intellects, and instincts to create something far greater than the sum of the parts.  The true power of Voltron was unleashed only when all the Paladins could successfully merge consciousnesses, not just with their own Lions, but with one another as well.  Their experience in battle over long years fostered this ability.  Would it not be contrary to the point to have to change out Paladins whenever the prior generation aged?  Our creators deliberately gave us our own senses of self, created a wholly unnecessary magical entity that resides within each Lion, in order to moderate the granting of immortality.  Voltron is not strong because our weapons are strong.  Voltron is strong because our Paladins are strong.  Are wise.  Are together.  But throughout history, power can be abused.  Bonds are not easily severed, immortality difficult to rescind once granted.  You’ve seen at least one tyrant using that power to the detriment of all.**

Lance jerked up.   _Wait, do you mean- Zarkon?  Zarkon was a Paladin?!_

**…Yes.  It was long ago.  Very, very long ago.  He discovered the bonding rituals by accident, as you did.  He used it to become a warlord, a conqueror, who has long outlived his race’s typical duration.**

_Come to think of it, I never really thought about why one crusty fuck was alive for, like, at least ten thousand years without aging a day_ , Lance said _.  It’s not like he spent all of it in a pod like Allura – he was out there getting shit done._

**And there you have it.**

Lance breathed.  In and out.  Wasn’t really much in the way of going back now.  _So… how do you do this magic bullshit of yours?  The icy thing?  I may as well jump right into it if I’m going to be like this, anyway._

… **Lance?**

_Yeah, what?_

**Look down.**

He did.

Frost, beautiful like spider silk, spread from his fingers along the metal floor, the tiniest glow emanating.

**I think you’re well on your way to becoming my most successful Paladin, whether you meant to be or not** , Shir’abi said, amusement clear.

“…Well, at least I’ve got _that_ going for me.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ze plot, she thickens


	8. Pep Talk

 

Keith balanced two trays of… he hesitated to call it ‘food’.  Nourishment, perhaps.  Caloric intake.  Gross alien slop.  Whatever terminology floated the most boats.  The Castle of Lions had never felt this quiet and eerie, even when haunted by actual ghosts.  Pidge and Hunk hadn’t left the main hangar in ages, refusing to go back to their rooms, eat, or sleep until they’d finished running all the tests and diagnostics required to go get Lance back.

It had only been two days.  Why did it feel so much longer?

Keith couldn’t really fault them for avoiding sleep.  Or food.  Neither one had really appealed to _him_ , either.  Still, Keith had grown up in the foster system, and knew to take food when it was available.  He also knew he was a useless asshole when exhausted, and deliberately drugged himself unconscious when he needed to sleep.

Coran was fixing up the ship as much as possible, paying special attention to their shielding and weapons.  Odds were good they weren’t getting their boy back without a fight, and the Castle usually took the worst of the damage.

Allura was helping out Hunk, who was trying to figure out a way to track the ship that took Lance.  The stupid thing had warped away the instant they realized the Blue Lion had been evacuated to safety, and tracking it was proving more difficult than anyone realized at the time.  Keith had eavesdropped on one of their initial conversations about it, having felt extra-useless that he wasn’t really doing anything to help out.  Apparently, Balmera crystals worked in a very similar fashion to normal non-renewable resources on Earth.  While it wasn’t burned exactly, it did slowly erode itself over time as the Quintessence holding it together was drained, the crystal itself crumbling.  Tiny residues were left behind which were different for every kind of Balmera crystal, depending on the topsoil from whence the crystal had been excavated.  Just like soil samples on Earth, every section of every Balmera was chemically different, and so too were each of the crystals.

The problem was that they only had one very shitty residue sample from the ship they were trying to track.  That, and it wasn’t like they could pull up a list of every ship’s residue signatures in the entire universe at the drop of a hat.  With only the Castle’s sensors, the largest radius they could scan was only a few systems wide (which was what Pidge was trying to extend).  It was better than nothing, but the fact also remained that the signatures would show every place the ship had ever been, not necessarily indicating how old or new the signatures were.  Unlike Earth, space was always moving, yet unchanging.  No wind or water to erode the trace of a passerby.  A cold and desolate place that would hold the marks made upon it until the end of time.  Decay wasn’t a thing out here in the black.  They could theoretically follow eons-old trails made by that ship and never find Lance.

Allura was convinced it could work.  Keith wasn’t so sure.  But then, Hunk had made a reliable not-Geiger counter in Keith’s broken down shack with little more than duct tape, an empty bean can, and pocket-sized repurposed pH probe.  He also might have scavenged Keith’s old broken laptop, but that wasn’t the point.  Whatever was wrong, Hunk could probably find a workaround.

Or… he probably could have if he hadn’t been so high-strung ever since the video.

The video had come in pretty early that morning.  Nobody slept well, if at all, so everyone had been awake when the hailer came through (Coran had been furiously attempting to back-trace the signal all the while, but they must have gone through so many satellites and servers, it was impossible to track).  It was also a recording.  No idea how long ago it had been made, how long ago they’d…

They shot Lance.

Judging from how terrible he’d looked, they’d done a lot worse, too.  It was one thing to see the blood and cuts on Lance’s face, to see how exhausted he looked, to see his eyes red and puffy from what Keith really hoped was physical irritation and not the alternative.  Lance didn’t cry – he took everything with a grin and a bad joke and went on with his life.  The universe would crash to a halt if Lance ever cried.  That was what it felt like, anyway.  It was another thing entirely to watch them hurt him, a feral grin on the soldier’s face when he saw the fear on Lance’s.  And then the screaming and the blood.  Lance dropping out of the frame.  Keith couldn’t speak for the others, but he’d been shaking as he watched.  Felt his muscles twitch involuntarily.  Whether it was from anger or fear, he couldn’t really tell.  Probably both.  Hunk and Pidge had known the guy way longer and way more intimately than Keith had, much as he hated to admit it.  He wished he could remember more about Lance from before everything went to shit, because Lance seemed to remember it just fine.

Keith whacked the button next to the hangar doors with his foot, his hands still full of trays.

“You have to eat sometime,” he announced.  Allura glanced up, but Hunk and Pidge kept doing whatever they were doing, hardly even pausing.

“No, we need _results_ ,” Pidge said.

“Collapsing from hunger’s a result.”

“Did you come here just to lecture us?  If so, I’m going to need you to leave.”  Hunk’s voice was absent-minded, so Keith didn’t take it too personally.  Nope, that was a lie, he totally took it personally.  Hunk was never rude, on purpose or otherwise.  Must’ve meant he was even more strung-out than he’d been a few hours ago.  That, or everyone just really hated Keith.

“I came here to make sure you don’t die.  Lance would kick my ass if I let his team starve.  Especially you, Pidge.  You’ve got no fat on your bones to sustain you.  If you really want, I can even spoon-feed this crap to you while you keep your hands busy doing… whatever you’re working on right now.”

She glanced up to send him a withering look.  “Unnecessary, but point taken.  Just hand me the damn glop and get out.”

“Hunk?”

“Fine, fine, whatever.  Just leave it here,” he said.

“And you’re actually going to eat it?”

“We’ll see.”

Allura had remained mostly silent throughout, but clearly no longer.   “I think it would be for the best if we took a small break.  Come back at it with fresh eyes in ten minutes.  If we’re stuck in a rut, the best course of action is to try again later.”

Hunk’s fingers slowed, then stopped on his keyboard.  He sighed deeply.  “…Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Even Pidge stopped working.  She pushed herself away from her desk very slowly, clearly loathe to leave it even for a minute.

Keith parked it right there on the floor.  “So… what kinda rut is it?”

Hunk groaned.  “Do I gotta?”

“Hey, explain it to me like I’m a rubber duck.  Works for the people who run Google,” Keith reasoned.

“He’s got a point,” Pidge said.

“What’s Google?  Or, for that matter, the exact function of a rubber duck?  Are ducks normally rubber on your Earth?” Allura asked.

“Ain’t nobody got time for that,” Pidge said.  “We’ll explain later.”

Hunk shoveled a bunch of the green goo into his face, mumbling around a full mouth.  “Pidge managed to extend the range of our sensors just fine, but we’ve still got the issue of time-lapse.  I think I’ve got the samples off our Lions pretty accurately, but the standard deviation is still a pretty wide margin.  So we’ve got two problems left over:  figuring out which signal is the most recent, and figuring out what the hell Lance was trying to say in the video.”

“I’m working on the signal acquisition,” Pidge said.

“And I’m trying to figure out what the fuck the code’s supposed to be.”

“You think it’s a code?” Keith said.  He’d kind of assumed it was coordinates.

“When we were in the Garrison, the teachers kept a real close eye on Lance-“ Keith couldn’t imagine why, “-so we had to pass messages between us in code.  Mostly Lance worked in A1Z26 and Caesar ciphers.  Combine them and you have a string of numbers that won’t make any sense to anyone but the person they’re intended for.  That has to be what this is, except…”

“It’s not working out?”

“It’s not working out.  I don’t get what I’m doing wrong.  I’ve tried every letter-shift in the thing.  Also, in normal circumstances, you have dashes between numbers to indicate when something’s a two and a six versus a twenty six.  None of that here.”

“Plus, there are two zeroes next to each other.  Happens twice, actually,” Keith murmured.

“Exactly,” Hunk said.  “That’s not a thing that can happen with an A1Z26 cipher.  So is it a different cipher or what?”

“I don’t think it is,” said Keith.

“Why’s that?”

“The translators only translate spoken words.  The Galra don’t know ASL, and even if they did, they don’t know our alphabet, and even if they did know our alphabet, they wouldn’t know how to spell words or what those words mean.  We can’t read Galra or Altean text, and the Galra can’t read anything we write down or spell out with our fingers.  If Lance wanted to send you a word-related message, he’d just spell out the words.  Or sign the full word like he did with that bit at the end.”  All four winced in unison at the reminder.

“…So he did mean just the numbers after all,” Hunk said.

“I really think so, yeah.”

“That’s even worse.  I have no idea what it’s supposed to be, then.  Coordinates?”

“That’s what I was thinking.  I don’t know.”

Allura shook her head.  “I can’t see how Lance would acquire his own coordinates.  Coordinates in the first place require an origin point, and we don’t have any point of reference to determine what that might be.  For all we know, the Galra use a different coordinate system origin point than the rest of the galaxy, so even if Lance… I don’t know, overheard a soldier mention their coordinates or the like, I can’t see us being able to do much with that information.”

Hunk and Pidge heaved a sighed and slumped.  God, their faces looked so defeated.  Dark bags were under their eyes, their skin looking a little more waxy than usual.  If they hadn’t eaten or slept, they probably hadn’t bathed, either.  Yikes.

“So… how’s Shiro?  You seen him around?” Hunk asked.

Keith huffed a sigh.  “No.  I don’t know where the hell he is.  Probably something stupid in his own little corner.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this frustrated.  He doesn’t really have a project to work on, to feel like he’s accomplishing something the same way you guys do.  I’m worried about him,” he confessed.

“So you’re Dadding us in his place?  Interesting,” Pidge said.  Her bowl was clean.  When had she-?

“Good one, Pidge.  That’s not even a word, but I agree with you.”

“The hell?  I’m not… _Dadding_ anyone.  What, I can’t keep you idiots from killing yourselves without somebody accusing me of,” he made a disgusted noise, “affection?”

“I know.  Terrible,” Pidge said.  Her shit-eating grin implied she was nowhere near sorry.

“I’m leaving you to your work now so I don’t have to look at your faces.  Which are uglier than usual, by the way.  Get some fucking sleep before I _make_ you take a nap.  By hitting you with a brick.”

“Yeah, sure!  Bye-bye, Daddy Keith!”

The bay doors closed behind him, but not before he managed to flip them off dramatically without ever turning around.

Actually… now that they’d mentioned it, Keith really was worried about Shiro.  The one or two times he’d seen Shiro since they got back from Tristepin, he’d been sleeping or… acting like he was busy with something, and damn near run off at top speed.  Power-walked, really.  Keith hadn’t pressed the matter.

At first it seemed like if anyone would be able to handle stress for extended periods of time, it would be Shiro.  That, or this was Shiro’s literal worst nightmare come to life, and he needed help immediately.  In lieu of professional therapy, Keith’s shitty pep talks would have to do.

Lance would have been so much better at this.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that this is both late and short. They made me pull a 10.5 hour shift at work and didn't even bribe me with doughnuts. The scoundrels. Good news is that I have the next, like, four chapters mapped. I don't think I'm even halfway through the planned storyline. How the fuck a oneshot turned into a potential 40k-long monster, I do not pretend to know.


	9. Pear Horn

 

Shiro was busy attempting to drive himself insane, and that was intended in the most literal sense possible.

Hunk had written down the long string of numbers Lance had signed out in the video after having watched that portion over and over.  Shiro had taken a single look at the piece of paper and felt sick.  Of course he had.  Surely he was just remembering what that message had cost Lance.  Nobody had eaten much more than scraps after the video streamed in.

But then the sick feeling persisted.  Surely just worry.  They were all sick with worry, weren’t they?  Hunk and Pidge didn’t seem to be eating or sleeping at all – and he’d be on their cases a little harder if he weren’t in the same boat.  Keith, Allura, and Coran seemed fine.  Or at least functional.  It made sense all around – the Alteans hadn’t known Lance for long, and Keith was used to having horrible stuff happen to him and the people around him and knew how to compartmentalize.

And then Shiro realized the numbers were what bothered him so much.

The rest of it bothered him too; of course it did.  How could it not?  Lance was a good kid.  He didn’t deserve any of this.  God, he really was a child, wasn’t he?  Seventeen seemed like such an adult age when Shiro had been in the Garrison, but… Shiro was 25 years old and still felt like a flailing toddler who’d been given way too much responsibility way too quickly.  He could only imagine what it was like for the youngest members of Team Voltron.

The problem at hand was that he literally _couldn’t_ imagine what Lance was going through at the moment – his own memories were locked away, hidden so effectively that Shiro couldn’t search through them properly.  Couldn’t prepare for whatever they might find when they finally got Lance back.  He had to know.  Had to arm himself with knowledge.  God willing, he’d be able to use his own memories to secure Lance’s safety – and that of the rest of his team.  He might be able to remember something crucial.

And that brought him back to the numbers.

Hunk seemed to think it was a code of some sort, judging by his muttering when he’d first jotted down the sequence.  Keith seemed to think it was coordinates.  They were both wrong.  Shiro had no idea what the hell it _was_ , but he knew it wasn’t either one of those.  And so, he had a brilliant idea.

He was going to deliberately induce a flashback.

This was easily the dumbest thing he’d done in his whole life, but if it got Lance back, it was worth it.  When they’d fought the Galra before, almost every time Shiro had been able to remember something that was relevant and helpful.  Unfortunately, being in mortal danger appeared to be the catalyst.  Getting vague hints about the past from pondering it over wasn’t enough.  He needed as many details as possible, and the best way to do that was to relive the whole thing.  Or at least the relevant parts of it.

Slight issue with his incredibly stupid yet brilliant plan:  Shiro’s flashbacks were often violent and terrifying.  They made him irritable and reckless.  They pushed his blood pressure and heart rate through the roof.  He’d jump at anything from sheer sensory overload whenever one threatened.  The last time he’d had one in the same room as another person, he’d literally spaced the fucker.  Sendak.  Shiro had honest-to-God murdered someone, shot them into the black of space, just because he went into a flashback and panicked.  Some part of Shiro blamed what Sendak had been saying at the time, saying it was provoked.  The other part of Shiro wondered if Sendak had said anything at all.  Reality was a fluid thing when your brain was constantly at war with itself.  And so, keeping homicidal tendencies in mind, Shiro elected to avoid his teammates for the duration of his experiments on himself.  Seemed like a solid plan.  And, if Hunk and Pidge kept themselves locked up in the hangar like they’d been doing so far, it was going to be relatively easy to do.

Keith would worry.  Keith always worried, whether he showed it or not.  Shiro just hoped Keith would understand in the end.

The training room was empty.  Shiro stood there in sweatpants and a tank (or really just the closest thing he could find in the Castle – he hadn’t exactly come across any decent marketplaces since leaving Earth).

“Training Level Five.  One participant,” Shiro said.

“Confirm: Training Level Five, one participant.”

“Confirmed.”

“Beginning Level Five in ten… nine… eight…”

Should he have upped the difficulty level and told the training room that there were more participants?  Maybe it would help if there were a lot of training bots all coming for him at once.  Or maybe it would screw up the room’s programming and all the other bots would just attack the air or something.

“Seven… six… five…”

But maybe that was a question for another time.  Shiro flexed his arm, feeling the vaguest tingle down the whole of it as it began powering up.

“Four… Three…. Two…”

The glow was in the corner of his eyes but the forefront of his mind.  Always so unsettling a shade of glowing magenta.  Shiro’s brain would always interpret that exact shade as _badnobadbadbadbadscarySTOPIT_ and it didn’t seem to matter that it was a part of him now.

“One.”

No escaping it.

The bot dropped down into the room, a particle blade drawn.  Keith must’ve been the last one to use the room; the default weapon was usually a blaster or something unless Keith went in and fiddled with the settings.  Oh well.  As long as the danger was real, it shouldn’t matter.

This was still a phenomenally bad plan.

Shiro leapt forward, arm stabbing forward with a bit of an arc, making it a bitch to block.  The bot dodged, fast as anything, and pulled the blade towards Shiro’s unguarded side.  Not gonna work – Shiro’s leg hooked around the bot’s, unbalancing it and forcing the strike away.

It looked like they had similar weapons, with a similar range.  The key difference was that Shiro’s arm was a lot more flexible and versatile than a fixed sword.  He’d have to find a way to use that.  Maybe it would be in his best interest to try to get behind the droid and wrap his hand around its neck.  Avoid the whole sword issue altogether by getting in at a closer range.

Easier said than done.  The bot was really fast.  Shiro constantly ducked and swerved, blocking strikes as much as possible while looking for an opening to dodge around to where those camera eyes couldn’t see him.

_Mustn’t be seen, mustn’t be seen, if they see they will kill me-_

A full-body tremor went through Shiro.  Where was he?  What was happening…?  Wait, yes!  It was working!  Sword incoming.  Arm up to block.  His throat locked at the sight of it.

_Pain, pain, an ache that would reach his bones if he still had bones at all but there’s just air instead of a limb and it feels so wrong-_

Shiro gasped for breath, pale in the face and sweating more than the exercise could account for.  The bot paid no heed and kept coming.

This wasn’t fucking working.  He needed information on numbers, not whatever personal traumas were under the surface, waiting to overtake him.  He needed to know what the fuck numbers had to do with anything at all.  Why would they matter to him?  Why would they have mattered to Lance?  Were they important for escape?  Were they part of how Shiro escaped?

_Run.  Can’t let them see.  Seven seconds before the next guard passes by.  Hide.  Hide.  Nowhere to hide.  Fight.  Kill.  Hide.  Corpses make good cover.  Pretend the screaming isn’t all you can hear.  Too many numbers, too many numbers, what do they mean-?_

“Shiro?”

The bot raised the blade high, ready to bring it down on Shiro’s head.  Shiro twitched, then hit the deck like it was all he’d ever known, rolling between the bot’s legs.

Keith stood at the door, mouth agape and a crease on his forehead.  Christ, he was worried.  Come to check up on Shiro, make sure he wasn’t dead or something.  This was not a good time.  This was the opposite of a good time.

The bot hummed, and sprang forward.

Straight for Keith.

Keith let out a yelp, but had his bayard out faster than eyes could follow.  It didn’t matter, because Shiro was there first, arm wrapped diagonally around the bot’s torso, crushing its internal components to a molten mess of sparks and wires.

They stood there, crumpled remains of the droid between them, silent.

Shiro heaved air, staring into nothing, face whiter than what could ever be healthy.

“…Shiro?”  Keith asked.  His voice was quiet.  From his tone, he wasn’t sure if Shiro could even hear him or not.  Or understand what he was hearing.  “Man, are you okay?  What was going on, there?”

“That was it.”

Keith’s eyes darted around in confusion.  “What was?”

“You.  I’ve been trying to make it work for hours.  It wouldn’t work.  But you.  When you were there all of a sudden, and it went for you… That was it,” Shiro said.  His voice felt about as solid as dust floating in the window lights.

Keith still didn’t understand, and it showed on his face.

“Where are the others?  I need to talk to them.”  He stumbled forward before smaller arms caught him and propped him up.

“Fuck!  Shiro?  Shiro, I think it can wait, whatever it is.  Man, you are nowhere near okay.”

“It can’t wait.  The numbers…”

Keith blinked.  “Wait, the numbers?”  Lightbulb.  “Shit, you know what the numbers mean?”

Shiro nodded.  “Room numbers.  We need ‘em for infiltration.  Once we’re in… there’ll be maps.  Tell us right where to go to get Lance.  They’re room numbers.”

Keith made a face.  “Some long fuckin’ room numbers.”

Shiro laughed, but it resembled a laugh about as much as a potato did.  Which was to say, not at all.  “They’re aliens, Keith.  It’s not supposed to make sense.”

* * *

“I would like to state for the record that I hated this plan from the beginning and I still hate it now,” Hunk said, clinging to the safety bars on the sides of the Green Lion.  “You couldn’t have put in extra seating?”

“No.  Honestly, Hunk, you’ve gotta get better with this stuff,” Pidge said.

“Or maybe you could come in your Lion and I could come in mine.  My lovely Yellow Lion that has a metric fuck-ton of shock absorption and comfy seating.”

“Yeah, and you wouldn’t be invisible.  Also they’d be way more likely to notice you sneaking in since the Yellow Lion’s the second biggest after Black and air pressure is A Thing They Will Notice.”

“And we have to go through the PECs because-?”

“Because PEC bay doors are several football fields wide.  Regular in-out non-PEC bay doors are about the size of a public bathroom.  If you can squeeze the Yellow Lion in through one of those suckers, more power to you,” Pidge said.

“I hate this plan.”

Keith groaned.  “We heard you the first five times.”

“Six,” Shiro muttered.

“Six.  Right.  My bad.”

Pidge squinted at her screen, fiddling with controls.  “Nice and easy, now…”

They were sneaking into a heavily-fortified Galra ship (super-mega-ultra-genius Pidge had figured out that battleship-class Balmera crystals were extremely rare, so most ships used multiple smaller crystals which were frequently swapped out, creating overlapping residues that could then be used to effectively timestamp their proceedings through the galaxy, which made the ship a cinch to find after the scan range had been extended a little) with only a single, invisible Lion.  Not even the most heavily-fortified Lion, or the biggest, or the one with the best weapons.  Nah, just the Green Lion.  Which, granted, was invisible, and that made the whole business of ‘sneaking’ a lot easier.  A very large part of Keith wanted to go in guns blazing, but they’d all agreed that that was more likely to end in a shitty hostage situation than not.  They’d have to strike fear in the hearts of men – er, aliens? Creatures? – another day.  So, sneaking it was.

PECs – Pressure Exchange Chambers – were a necessary part of long-term space travel.  Technology was easily to the point where small entrances or exits from a pressure-regulated space craft were sturdy enough to withstand the harsh demands put upon it by the pressure differential, but larger entrances needed a boost in safety, which meant multiple successive chambers that each were pumped up or down in air pressure as needed to allow easy passage to the next chamber without blowing the whole thing sky-high.  This, incidentally, made it really easy for someone to sneak in behind another vessel and stay right next to it while it went through the pressurization process, because there were no cameras in the PECs.  Not that any camera would have picked up Pidge’s Lion, anyway.

Should be simple.  Get in, get a map, get Lance, get out.

“This is going to go pear-shaped, isn’t it?” Shiro muttered.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm quitting my shitty retail job as soon as possible. Thank you so much for the kind reviews. You guys are the bomb and the only reason my patience persists.


	10. Hearts, Stars, and Horseshoes

“You know, I thought the numbers would be in the Arabic numbers.  Y’know, the ones we use.  I mean, Lance said – er, signed – regular numbers.  I don’t know what I was expecting,” Pidge said.

“Might want to hurry it up,” Shiro said.  “Next round of patrols should be here in about three minutes and I don’t like our chances if we get into a shoot-out this early.”

“Hang on, this isn’t as easy as I thought.  I mean, the ones, twos, threes, and nines are obvious.  But what the fuck is this little upside-down heart shape supposed to be?”

“Hm.  Maybe a five?” Hunk suggested.

“Why do you say that?  What part of that looks like a five to you?”

Hunk shrugged.  “I dunno.  I feel like there’s a reason, I just can’t remember it right now.”

“I know the feeling,” Shiro muttered.

“The dots are zeroes, right?”

“Probably,” Hunk said.

“Okay, so if we are… here,” Pidge said, jabbing a finger against the map, “we’re looking for something that starts with whatever 710 is and ends with a 375.  The in-between is kinda pointless.  Okay, guys, say when you find it.  Jesus, there are a lot of numbers up here.”

“It’s a directory where every room has a 26-number-long designation.  Of course it’s going to be a nightmare.”

“Can you speed it the hell up?” Keith said over the comms.  He’d been assigned to stay back with the Green Lion, ensuring its safety while the rest went to grab Lance and get out.  They were reasonably certain his combat skills would be enough to handle any bullshit on the ground alone.

Shiro closed his eyes and concentrated.  “The prisoners’ wards… I think the brig rooms all start with the 710 designation, but I remember it as being a V-shape, a line, and a dot.  I think I figured out they were numbers, but I could never tell which was which.”

“V-shape?”  Pidge squinted at the map again.  “There!  You think that’s it?”

“Uh, guys?” Hunk said.  He jerked a thumb down the hall.  Distantly, they could hear the tramp of combat boots.

“Fuck,” Pidge muttered.  “Yeah, good enough for me.  We’re hooking a left up here.”

They spoke no more, hauling ass.

Surprisingly, very few personnel seemed to be on board.  Was it Galran lunch break?  Was the whole thing run by skeleton crew?

Hunk remembered what Pidge had said when they asked her about what had happened in Tristepin.  Galran troops had lain everywhere, critically injured – most likely Lance’s work.  That was why she’d assumed he was fine at first; anyone who could take on a full company of Galran soldiers and win was probably okay.  She’d been beating herself up nonstop for having been wrong.  Either way, their fight down on the surface meant that the ship was likely understaffed.  They’d gone straight into warp without bothering to retrieve their fallen comrades, or pick up the scrap left over from the droids.  In a way, it made sense.  Falling in battle was deeply shameful to their entire culture, so it might be seen as a mercy to leave them injured on a hostile planet to die.

What a fucked-up way to spend a military career.

Right down this hallway.

Through the fourth doorway on the left.

Hook another left, then another right – had to go around the indentation for a supply closet, presumably.

Pidge had always been decent with remembering maps.  That, and their helmets came equipped with small cameras that could pick up any image in their field of vision and project it in the upper corner as needed.  A neat bit of programming.

The lighting was suddenly much brighter.  Blinding, almost.

Shiro winced and sucked in a breath.  “This is it.”

“You sure?” Hunk said.  “I thought dungeons were supposed to be dark and creepy.”

Shiro shook his head.  “Not here.  They make it bright so you can’t sleep, and so that they’ll see any escape attempt coming a mile away.  No point in giving an escaped prisoner the cover of darkness to hide in.”

“Lance,” Pidge whispered.

“It’s ending in 375, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Fan out.  We’ll find him.”

Pidge paused.  “…We should check all of them.”

Shiro swallowed.  “Y-yeah.  Do that.  But… we can’t take everyone back with us.  We don’t have the resources.”

“Then what the fuck is the point of us?”  Pidge didn’t look back, and stomped off to the far end of the long corridor.

“…Looking for-?”

“I know,” Shiro said.

“They might have solid information.  If we can get them out… we probably should.”

“We might just end up getting them killed.”

“They’re prisoners of the Galra, Shiro.  They know that.  If they decide to come with us anyway, it’s because they’ve deemed that an acceptable risk.  It’s their decision, not ours,” Hunk said.

“We can’t stop if someone falls.”

“Then make sure they know that.  Full disclosure.  Start opening doors.”  And with that, Hunk turned to the nearest cell door, activated his bayard, and blasted it to kingdom come.

Shiro activated his hand, and prayed to God that none of the prisoners would mistake him for the enemy.  Or worse, _recognize_ him.

A many-tentacled creature that appeared to have horns.

A tiny fluorescent orange being that resembled nothing so much as a striped seahorse.

Something that looked almost human apart from the head being upside-down.

Not Lance.

Not Lance.

Not Lance.

Not Matt or Sam Holt, either, not that Shiro expected to see them as prisoners instead of workers in a mining camp or something, though.

Another crash down the hall from Hunk activating his bayard and just slamming into shit.  “Hey!  Guys, I-!  I think I got him!”  Shiro came running.

“Seriously?” Pidge said, skidding to a halt by the door.  She gasped, and Shiro was almost afraid to look in.

The room was coated in ice.  Thick stuff, too, at least a few inches of solid ice.  The temperature of the air had to be below zero.  The hallway had felt like a reasonable temperature, but even just standing in the doorway, Shiro could see puffs of his own breath hang in the air.

What truly froze him to the core was that he couldn’t see any similar puffs from Lance.

“…Please tell me… he’s not…” Hunk’s voice was smaller than Shiro had ever heard it.

Shiro walked carefully into the room, gripping as best he could with his toes.  “Stay on alert,” he said.  “Next round of guards can’t be far.”

He knelt next to Lance’s body, lying prone in the corner.  He was in just a ratty tee dotted with blood and his jeans.  He didn’t even have shoes.  God, he was so still.  His chest wasn’t moving, and neither were his eyes.  Shiro was afraid to touch him, terrified that he’d be able to feel the cold of a corpse even through gloves.

“…Lance?  Please, buddy, I need you to wake up.”

No response.

Shiro took a deep breath, and reached out to shake him awake as gently as possible.

At the first touch, Lance exploded like a goddamn firework with a scream, immediately curling into a ball.  Apart from the small heart attack he’d given them all, the other paladins started laughing in hysterical relief.

“Lance!  Jesus Christ, Lance, you scared the piss out of me!  Seriously – never do that again,” Hunk said.

Lance was still curled up, shaking.  Of course he was shaking.  How he’d survived in a room this cold for this long was a mystery.  But… why was he…?

Shiro suddenly understood.  He placed one hand on Lance’s head, ruffling the boy’s hair.

Blue eyes peeked out from behind curled knees and arms, then widened.  “Guys!” he cried, and launched himself at Shiro.

He was of half a mind to crush the boy with a hug, then remembered just how many injuries were probably underneath it all.  The bruising on his bare arms seemed telling enough.

“We got you, we got you.  Don’t worry,” he said into Lance’s hair, knowing it didn’t matter.

“Hey Lance, you okay?  Do you think you can walk?” Pidge asked.  “We kinda gotta jet.”

“Pidge, he can’t hear you,” Shiro said.

“Huh?”

“One of his hearing aids is missing and the other is blackened.  I don’t know what happened there, but it looks like it’s sustained some pretty substantial damage.  I’d be very surprised if it’s still functional.  He can’t hear a word we’re saying,” Shiro explained.

“…Well, that’s going to make this harder.”

“Hold this,” Hunk said, shoving his bayard at Pidge.  She stumbled under its bulk for half a second before it reverted to its normal compact size.

He waved his hands around to get Lance’s attention, then started signing slowly.

Lance squinted and tilted his head.  He pointed at Hunk’s mouth and made the universal ‘talking’ hand gesture.  Hunk winced and tried again, this time mouthing the words along with the signs.

“Oh!  Yeah, I’m good to walk.  Not really much scary shit’s happened to my legs, and I’m grateful for that,” Lance said.  “Where’s Keith?  Is he okay?”  They all nodded.  Pidge gave him a thumbs-up.  “Good to know.  So… we’ve got a plan to get the hell out of here, right?”

The other three paladins exchanged guilty glances.

“…I can’t fucking believe you guys.”

* * *

In the end, out of the 23 prisoners held captive in the ship, 12 decided to flee with the paladins, including Lance.

Pidge patched into her helmet.  “Allura?  What are the odds I can get a thermal reading of the ship?  Can we see if any patrols have noticed us yet?  We’ve got Lance and company and are en route back.”

“That’s wonderful news!  Give me a moment.  It looks like this particular ship is built to withstand more extreme temperatures than most ships – likely a mining-class ship before it was repurposed for battle.  Our sensors aren’t doing much with all that thermal shielding for now, but there are similar, if less robust, functions inside your suits.  Since you’re on that side of the thermals, you should be able to pick up a limited radius of heat signals.  I’ll have to fiddle with a few settings on my end, though,” Allura said.

“Good.  Let’s do it,” Shiro said.

“Looking pretty quiet on this end still,” Keith said.

“Even better.  I don’t think they’ve noticed us yet, and that’s the way I want it to stay.”

“Seconded,” said Hunk.

“Then we’re moving out.”

It didn’t take them a full two minutes to be spotted by guards.

As quick as Hunk had been with his bayard, it hadn’t been enough.  Alarms blared throughout the ship, an angry screech that only Lance didn’t mind.  He looked almost amused at the winces on everyone else’s faces, the butthead.

“You should probably wear this.  We brought it with us just in case,” Pidge said, chucking Lance’s helmet at him.  He popped it on, face suddenly grim.  He probably was still dealing with head wounds, old and new alike.  No point in adding any more to the tally.

As they ran down the hallways, Pidge and Hunk leading the way, Shiro’s eyes dropped down to Lance’s bandaged hand.  It looked… almost normal.  No blood soaking through like he would have expected.  Lance didn’t even appear to take note of it, although every so often his face screwed up in pain as a hand drifted toward whatever part of his abdomen was bothered by running.  But his hand… Shiro had expected there to be a few shattered metacarpals in there.  It should have been agony.  Lance should be favoring that hand a great deal, cradling it close to him to keep it steady, but he wasn’t.

Something was wrong, and Shiro couldn’t tell what.

Another five or six droids.  Shiro surged forward himself, crushing through the torsos of three.  Hunk took care of one, and Pidge managed to slice through the other two.

“Paladins!  Thermal imaging should be operational!  Tap the upper-left temple on your helmets!” Allura said.

Shiro tapped his own, then reached out and tapped Lance’s, too.  Lance made a confused noise, then a little, “ _Ohhhh_.”

What Shiro saw almost made him grind to a halt in horror.  Hundreds of heat signatures converging on the largest bay, where Keith was sitting with the Green Lion.  They’d be there to cut off the Paladins from their only escape route, unless they hauled some serious ass.  They were just four guys, one of whom was still seriously injured and unarmed, along with 11 other injured escaped prisoners to protect.

Lance saw it, too.  Understood.  Was very pale in the face, but with an expression of determination.

He reached out, gently wrapping unnaturally cold fingers around Shiro’s human arm.

“Don’t worry, Boss Shiro.  I think I’ve got something that resembles a plan.  Just let me handle it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got two second interviews lined up. wish a ho luck. i got the next few days off work so i can probably update a little faster than the normal every-other-day schedule


	11. Into the Black

Lance had been pretty sure that a trap had been set.  They hadn’t gleaned anything useful from him, so they were trying to trap at least one of the other paladins there.  Crack them open like a piñata and see what treats were inside.

He wasn’t sure of the scope of their plan (or if the Galra had even bothered coming up with a plan other than “Wait Until Paladins Arrive Then Shoot Stuff”), but he did know about the PECs they were headed towards.  Each chamber along the way had to be opened remotely from a control panel situated right beside the final bay, which meant that anyone needing to make an unauthorized departure wasn’t going to get far without leaving someone behind in the control room.

The guys (and Pidge) would never let an escaped prisoner do it, and they’d come here to rescue Lance in the first place, so they would hardly consider leaving him behind.

That narrowed their options significantly.  Thing is, none of them were thinking this through.  They also didn’t know that Lance had more tricks up his sleeve than he’d had the last time they’d all been together.

“Allura?” he said into his helmet comms, hoping she could hear him.  If she responded, he certainly couldn’t hear it.  “Hey, I need you to do me a favor and open Abi’s – sorry, the Blue Lion’s – launch bay doors.  Just leave ‘em open.”

Shiro’s mouth was moving.  Lance’s eyes flicked over to Hunk, who shoved his bayard under an armpit to sign what Shiro’d said.  “What the hell are you planning?”  Loosely translated.

“Okay, we’re headed straight to Keith and Green, load up everybody who needs to get on. Then, we leave.”

Lance didn’t need a translator to read the sheer “what the fuck” written all over the paladins’ faces.

“It is slightly more complicated than that, but I’ll handle all the tougher bits.  Abi knows what’s going on and if my message got through, she’ll be en route any second.  The PECs are going to be the toughest part of escaping now that they know we’re here, so it’s probably a smarter plan to make the work easier from the outside.  We don’t have the time to futz with everything from the-“

A plasma shot parted the air by Lance’s ear.  He paled and ran a little faster, no matter how much it pulled at what had to be a cracked rib.  At least the other paladins seemed more on board with it all now.

He’d only lied a little.

Okay, he’d lied a lot.

They’d hate his real plan and never agree to it, so it wasn’t like they’d given him much of a choice.  As it stood, escaping wasn’t enough.  The priority was keeping this ship paralyzed for long enough that further pursuit would be… unwise.  If the ship’s defenses were still active when the Green Lion was leaving, they’d find a way to riddle her with plasma shots, invisibility or no.  It wasn’t a risk Lance was willing to take with both civilians and his team’s lives at risk.  Which of course meant he had to do something incredibly stupid.

The problem was going to be slipping away without them raising a fuss.

“Stop!”

“It’s them!”

“Drop your weapons!”

Shots ricocheted off damn near everything, and a prisoner cried out something as one grazed his shoulder.  Another grabbed him around the waist, physically hauling him down the hallway so they wouldn’t have to leave him behind.

One of the guards started laughing – Lance could tell by the way his shoulders shook, even under all the armor.

Wait a…

It was that fucking prick Yavosh.  Who still, by the way, had possession of Lance’s bayard.  It was hanging unceremoniously from Yavosh’s belt-looking thing, a pointless trophy.  “Oh, _hell_ no,” Lance muttered.  “Detour!  Keep going, you guys!”

“Lance?!”

“The fuck are you doing, man?!” Hunk shouted.  Lance didn’t hear; he had skidded to a halt, ushering the others onwards while he turned around.

“You go on ahead, I’ll stay with him!” Shiro yelled to the others.  He wasn’t letting Lance out of his sight if he could help it – not after what they’d been through the last couple of days trying to get him back.

Pidge and Hunk nodded after a beat.  Fear made the lines of their bodies tense, but they’d do their jobs.

Lance saw Shiro’s arm light up, saw him look around for whatever had caught Lance’s attention, saw him realize.

The impending volley of plasma shots forced them both to take what minor cover they could.  Lance looked across the way and grinned.  Shiro was using military handsigns to convey the plan.  Lance gave a thumbs up and nodded.

Shiro burst out from his cover the instant the shooting slowed, banking off the narrow sides of the hallway to make it harder for anyone to aim.  Arm humming disturbingly, Shiro threw an uppercut at Yavosh, forcing him back to avoid the blow.  Yavosh’s blaster wasn’t so lucky as to escape damage, the front end neatly melted off.  Shiro gave the soldier a beautiful smile that clearly said, “And to think that could have been you”.

Lance darted out from the minor cover Shiro’s advance had provided, snatching his bayard back with the ease of a practiced pickpocket.  He whooped as it morphed into his blaster, and immediately started laying down cover fire.  Maybe fighting all the droids and soldiers was a shitty plan, but having a long-range weapon sure made escape easier.  Plus there was no way Lance was leaving his bayard.  Just a matter of pride at that point.

As soon as the guards were out of sight, forced to hang back or be shot, Lance laughed and clapped Shiro on the back.  “Nice one, Fearless Leader!”  Shiro gave him a tight smile back, one that seemed… kind of off, somehow.

Of course.  This had to be fucking with Shiro’s mind.  He’d stayed behind with Lance, practically alone in facing a force that had been his tormentors for something like two years.  That had to bring back a thousand memories Shiro could happily stand to forget.  But he’d done it anyway, just because Lance needed backup.  Something uncurled in Lance’s heart, just a little bit.

It was going to be okay.

He was really getting out of this place.

Shiro was here, Hunk was here, Pidge and Keith and everyone came back for him.  It was going to be okay.

The bay was just up ahead.

“Lance!”

“Shiro!  You guys okay?”

“We’re fine.  Had to pick something up,” Shiro said, gesturing at the bayard in Lance’s hand as he wiggled in the air with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Okay Green, everybody’s here!  Open on up,” Pidge said, and the Green Lion phased into view, leaning forward and opening her mouth wide.  Smallest of the Lions or not, Green was huge when compared to the dinky species that appeared common in this part of the universe.

Lance swallowed.  This was going to be the shitty part of his plan.

He kept his bayard trained on the bay threshold, unblinking.  From the corner of his eyes, Lance could see the others rounding up the escapees and ushering them into the Lion’s mouth, most of them understandably nervous about it.  From the flash of red, Keith had probably jumped on down to lend a hand as well.  It was good to see him again, and that thought in and of itself surprised Lance.  When had he started enjoying _Keith’s_ company?

Eh, probably when he’d been made a houseguest of the literal worst hosts ever.  Keith was a fuckin’ prince compared to the hospitality of Druids.

There.  The droids and soldiers had finally caught up, plasma blasts flying.  Lance returned fire, cursing bitterly under his breath.  “Hurry it up, guys!”

One shot grazed his outer thigh.  He stumbled briefly before something in his brain locked down on the sensation, crushing it into submission.  He had a fucking job to do, and no weenie little nick was going to change that.  Pain was nothing.  He’d taken enough of it in his time here.  Time to return the favor.

Fun fact:  Lance had always been a damn good shot.  A little-known benefit to having no hearing was that you didn’t expect a painfully loud gunshot noise and flinch upon firing.  Headshots for the droids.  Kneecaps for the officers.  Elbows if they kept trying to get up, or fire from the floor.  Collarbones if they really pissed him off.  Did the Galra have proper collarbones?  Whatever they had in that general area, it looked like shooting it put one of those fuckers out of commission for a good long while.

Hunk was waving his arms, and Lance risked glancing over to see what he was signing.

“Everybody in!  We’re leaving!”

“Okay, I got it!”  Sweat rolled down Lance’s forehead.  This was it.  Moment of truth.

He backed towards Green slowly, reaching with his mind.

_Abi.  Abi, I need you to tell Green the plan._

**She already knows.  It is done.**

And with that, Green’s mouth sealed shut, leaving Lance outside.

Lance smiled wryly.  They were probably shitting bricks inside there.  It was going to be okay.  He really did have a plan.  They’d understand in time.

He bolted as fast as his injured legs would take him to the control room sectioned off in the corner.  The door slid open, the officer who had been inhabiting it hefting a blaster.  Lance took him out before the poor guy got even one shot off.

“Sorry, but I’m really not sorry,” Lance said, shoving the prone body out of the way while grabbing the access card from around the officer’s neck.  He swiped it by the reader on the inside, and the door slid shut.  He activated every lock sequence he could find, but it was a matter of time until someone with the right clearance showed up to open the thing.  Time was of the essence.

He looked at the control board.

…Oh.

Lance couldn’t read Galran.

**Guess the others aren’t the only ones who can’t think a plan through.**

_Is this really the time, Shir-the-fuck-Abi?_

**You gave me a middle name.**

_How else are you supposed to know I’m angry with you?_

**Fair enough.  My professional suggestion is to press buttons until one of them does something.**

Sounded as good a plan as any.  “Button-mashing it is,” Lance said.  Shots made tiny dents in the outer doors of the compartment.  This thing was probably, like, lined in a solid foot of lead for additional security, but Lance didn’t know for sure how long the additional fortifications would last.

He smacked his hands down on the touchscreen, punching everything in sight.  Lights turned on and off.  Something began making a disturbing whirring noise (he could feel the vibrations in his bones, like when some loser on the highway jacked his bass far past safe levels).  He might have turned the coffee maker on.  Some appeared to do nothing at all, unless he was messing with the remote controls for the employee lounge television or something.  Suddenly, the bay doors began opening.

“Yes!  Oh sweet motherfuck and all her baby fucklings,” Lance crowed.

Green knew her part of the mission, and flew into the next chamber.  Only two more to go – two more doors to open, and Green would be home free.

The shots outside slowed as the sudden, violent drop in air pressure sucked them closer to the bay doors.  If Lance had been concerned with doing the thing right (or known how), he’d have sucked the air from the room first.  Inconsequential.

…Actually, it might be better to leave the doors open without pumping air.

This was pure evil, and that of course meant that Lance had to do it right now.

“If that’s the button for opening to PEC 2…” Lance searched for something with similar symbols, but the Galran script for the sequential number.  “Aha!  PEC 3 doors opening!”  He poked the screen, and the air pressure plummeted even further.  He could vaguely see the officers outside from a little window in the wall.  They all appeared to be scrambling to avoid being sucked in, and most were high-tailing it out of there as quickly as possible.  One more door and they would all be spaced, and they knew it.  Good.  It was nice to incite that kind of visceral fear in bullies.

Lance had already found the key for the last obstacle between his found family and freedom.

He sucked in the biggest breath he could and held it.

 _Time to see what’s behind Door Number 3,_ he thought.

 **Are you afraid?** Shir’Abi asked.

_…Not with you here.  Never with you here._

He pressed the button.

The hangar was ripped to shreds from the massive outflux of air pressure, explosive decompression shattering the reinforced glass windows and sucking Lance out, out, out, into the black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meant to write this yesterday but then I had three anxiety attacks in a row so whoopsie daisy guess i'm updating with the normal schedule after all :/


	12. Nothing For It

It took roughly three seconds after the Green Lion’s mouth closed for Keith to realize that Lance wasn’t on board, and 0.82 seconds after that to start screaming about it.

“Pidge!  Pidge, fucking open it up!  Lance is-!”

“I got it!” she yelped, slamming herself into the pilot’s seat and tugging at the controls.  Nothing was happening.  “Uhhh, guys?  I don’t got it.  Everything I do is being overridden and I have no idea why!”

Green thrummed to life anyway, the telltale lurch to overcome inertia proving that they were definitely moving.

“What’s going on?  Are we caught?” Shiro asked, face pale and drawn.

Pidge shook her head.  “I don’t think so.  Hang on, I think I can pull up visuals still.”

The screens glowed and showed the exterior of the craft, slight interference glitching out parts of it here and there sporadically.

Somehow, Lance had booked it across the hangar, heading straight for the control hub on the far wall.  A soldier came out hefting a blaster, but obviously didn’t get far.  Lance pretty much clotheslined the sucker.  What the hell was he doing?  Why wouldn’t he try to get into the Green Lion with the rest of them?

“He expected this,” Hunk said.  His voice was strangely even.  “He knew the whole time.”

“He said he and Blue had a plan,” Shiro said.

“I don’t know about you, but over the comms, I didn’t hear much in the way of details on that plan,” Keith said.

Whatever the hell Lance was doing in there, out of sight, the blast door leading to the next PEC opened up like a gaping maw, sucking everything in towards it briefly while the pressures evened out.

“ _Lance!_ ” Keith screamed into the comms, hoping stupidly that Lance would somehow hear him.  “That’s enough!  Get your ass in here and let’s _go_!”

Pidge slapped at her controls harder.  “Nothing’s working.  Why can’t I-?  What did I do wrong?  Green, why are you doing this to me?  He’s my friend; I’m not leaving him!  Please, please, please, just work.  Please.”  Shiro leaned over her chair, unconsciously trying to shield her physically from… well, everything.  It wasn’t working.  Green was clearly moving away from the bay, from the ship, and from Lance.

“Concentrate.  Focus on your Lion.  If you can talk to Green, Green can talk to Blue, and Blue can talk to Lance.  Figure out what the hell is going on,” Shiro said.

“I can’t!  Shiro, I’m pretty much the worst out of all of us when it comes to being able to communicate with my Lion.  Well, no, Keith is the worst.”

“Hey, I’m right here!”

“Point being, even if Green talks to me, _I can’t understand what she’s saying_ ,” Pidge said.

“Try.  You don’t have to understand everything.  Little flashes.  We don’t need the whole picture, just a little piece or two and we can figure out the rest.”

“You got this!” Hunk said.

Pidge swallowed the urge to hyperventilate.  The second PEC door opened, the Green Lion fully lifting off and flying slowly through.  She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate.

_Please.  I don’t need much.  What the fuck is Lance doing and how do I get him out of here safely?_

Flashes, like she’d gotten through Blue, but somehow… it felt warmer.  Sharper.  Quick pinpricks of light.  Green’s thoughts felt like home in a way Blue’s hadn’t.

An image of the Blue Lion.  Doors opening, others inside the ship closing.  Blast doors.  The entire bay blowing.  The primary engines of the ship failing, the launch bays for all fighters put out of commission.  Lance.  Ice.  Blackness.

“He’s blowing this whole subsection of the ship.  Explosive decompression.  It’ll cripple their fighting power, and they won’t be able to pursue once we run for it,” Pidge murmured.

“And Lance?  He can’t just stay there; he’ll get fucking killed if it-“

“I don’t know, Keith!  Gimme a damn minute!  Green said something, but I can’t make any sense of it,” Pidge said.  “Lance… Lance is…  He has to stay in there for this to work,” she said.

“We didn’t come all the way here just to lose him,” Hunk snarled.

“Green… I think she’s saying it’s okay somehow.  I don’t understand.”

Shiro closed his eyes and breathed.  Tried to feel like his skin was on right.  “He said he had a plan.  Green says he has a plan.  All we can do is pray that this plan goes slightly better than some of our _other_ plans.”

And with that, the last bay door opened, and Green shot off into the black.

“Holy smooooookes!” Hunk screamed, clutching the safety bar with one hand and trying to keep two ex-prisoners from face-planting into the floor with the other.

“Shit!” yelped Keith.

“Sorry!  Sorry,” said Pidge.

Shiro had been better braced than the rest of the others (with the sole exception of a civilian alien who was in possession of exactly eleven very versatile tentacles), so he was the first to realize.  “Lance!  He’s-“

In the visuals still up on screen, fire engulfed the launch bay they had just evacuated, pouring in from the engines situated right next door as the coolant system had been destroyed.

Shocked silence.

“…No,” whispered Hunk.

Pidge refused to believe.  She closed her eyes again, reached for the familiar warmth of the Green Lion.

This time, she understood perfectly.

**Watch, wait, and you will see.  All is well.**

She smiled.  “Keep your pants on, guys.  Green says to wait for it.”

“Wait for what?” asked Keith.

“Shhh.”

“But I-“

“Shh!”

He pouted, but it was impossible to miss the desperate hope that was on his face.  On all their faces.

Pidge simply sat in her chair, watching.  Waiting.

And there she was, a beacon of hope, gliding into view:  the Blue Lion had arrived.  Her mouth opened, and closed around something too small to see on Pidge’s monitor.

Still, nothing over the comms.  What if Blue was too late?  Had Lance found a proper EVA suit in that dinky little control room?  Surviving the vacuum of space was impossible otherwise.

“…What is that?” Shiro muttered.

“What’s what?”

“The noise over the commlink.”

They all frowned, reaching up to dial up the volume.

Sure enough, there was a strange crackling noise all of a sudden, like someone cracking open a fresh ice cube tray.  A couple of ringing thunks like a dozen little rocks hitting a metal floor.

“What in the…?”

And then.  What they’d been waiting for.  Heaving, gasping breaths through the speakers, clearly not from anyone present.

Lance was alive and breathing.

“Yes!” Keith screamed, punching the air.  Hunk picked up the smaller paladin in a crushing bear hug, Shiro and Pidge laughing themselves sick in sheer relief.  The other escaped prisoners had to think all of them were out of their minds.

“Pidge!  Pidge, you have to tell Green to tell Blue to tell Lance to give a sit-rep,” Shiro said.  “God, this really _is_ convoluted.”

“You got it, boss,” she said.

After a minute or so, they heard Lance coughing.

“I-“ the faint sound of choking, “Wow.  Okay, I hate that.  Anyway, hi guys.  Not dead.  Yet, anyway.  Told you I had a plan.  So, uh, reporting in and all that.  Er, hang on, give me a sec, _bébäʢshëd_.”  The sound of more coughing.  “I’ve never had all the air sucked clean out of my lungs before.  Can’t say I enjoyed the experience.”

They all frowned.  They all knew perfectly well that sudden oxygen deprivation on that scale knocked a person unconscious immediately – it was part and parcel with all the Garrison’s flight school medical training, since a breached aircraft hull was the exact kind of abrupt depressurization that could cause blackouts.  Not ideal for a pilot to be unconscious in an emergency.

“Okay, so first off, sorry about taking the controls off your hands, Pidge.  I asked Blue to make sure it got done, and Green I guess agreed to it?  I don’t know.  They’re colluding or something.  In cahoots.  I just knew you guys were never going to trust that I could get through it okay.  Hell, even I wasn’t totally sure about it, but it worked, and far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth.  The whole plan was basically blow the launch bay, blow everything next to it, get blasted into space, have Abi catch me, go home.  Pretty uncomplicated as far as my plans go.  Also, I’m going to need to replace a lot of fluids when we get back to the Castle.  A _lot_ of fluids.  I think I legit sweated out a couple pounds in… what, a minute?  I’m still covered in ice.  Thank fuck I’m immortal.  Anyway, more details back at the Castle when I’m in clean clothes and not feeling like I just got hit with an elephant.  Lance out.”

They all stood there, mouths slack.

“…What did he just say?”

“That… that was sarcasm, right?  Hyperbole?  Metaphor?  Some other turn of phrase that isn’t literal?” Hunk said.

“I… I have no idea what’s going on anymore.  I vote we stop thinking about it until we are back home and have had showers and lunch and some alcohol if we can find it.  I don’t think this is a conversation I want to have sober,” Keith said.

“You’re underage,” Shiro warned.

“If Lance gets to be immortal, I get to do shots.”

“Can’t argue with that logic, Shiro.”

“I- What is wrong with all of you?”

“Again:  a question for later.  When we’re not thinking longingly of the sweet embrace of death.”

* * *

The Galra ship had still had use of its main ion cannon, but apparently whoever was on cannon duty that day had shitty aim, because they got back to the Castle of Lions with little fuss or muss.  Green had unlocked the controls shortly after clearing the area, Pidge grumbling the whole time about how she never wanted to deal with that nonsense ever again.

It wasn’t like they could sit down and discuss the matter immediately.  Lance was pretty significantly injured, and true to his word, he looked substantially thinner.  His clothing was encrusted with thick layers of ice, crushed aside and broken at the joints.  He’d honest-to-God sweated out several pounds worth of fluids that had to be replaced as quickly as possible before his kidneys shut down.  Lance had had a large cup of water shoved at him, then pushed inside a healing pod along with the other escaped prisoners who were in less than ideal physical condition.  The ones in relatively good health had to be situated in some of the spare rooms, most of them able to give Coran information on where they lived and how to get there.  Allura stayed in the healing pod room for the most part, keeping an eye on the proceedings.  The other paladins found themselves gravitating there more often than not.

Pidge wandered in, somewhat unsurprised to see them all already there.

“Yo.  What’d I miss?”

Shiro turned.  “Pretty much nothing.  Obviously, he’s not awake yet.”  He gestured to Lance, floating eerily in the pod.

“I just don’t know what to make of it,” Allura said, squinting at the data readouts.  “I had my suspicions that higher-level bonding with one’s Lion might bring about changes, but I thought it was a purely psychological change.  From what I can tell, almost everything about Lance’s body is fundamentally altered.”

“Like what?” Keith asked.  "And - wait, hang on, what do you mean, 'bonding with one's Lion'?  Didn't the Galra do some sort of...?"  His eyes darted over to Shiro as his voice trailed off.

“No, the Galra don't have this kind of technology.  They aren't anywhere close to this subtle.  No mortal creature should be able to survive what he’s been through, let alone a human.  To be exposed to the vacuum of space near enough to direct starlight is to boil and freeze simultaneously.  If what you say is true, not only did he survive, he was conscious throughout the experience.  It’s impossible,” Allura said.

“Hm.  Well, he _was_ kinda covered in ice.  Maybe the initial covering served as insulation?” Hunk said.  He knew it was a dumb idea even as it was coming out of his mouth.

“I haven’t the faintest.  But even so, his body temperature is far below normal.  It’s below room temperature, even.  He is perpetually cold.  Did you not notice from the thermal imaging when you were escaping?”

Pidge tried to think back.  Come to think of it, there had been a cooler spot on the thermographs.  A few of them, actually.  Several of the alien species naturally ran cold, so Pidge hadn’t thought anything of it.  And of course she hadn’t thought to match each heat (or cold) signature to each person – that would have been an enormous waste of time when they were kind of busy trying to get out alive and all that good shit.

“I have no idea how his body temp is that screwy, but it might explain why he doesn’t have, like, frostbite or anything from all that ice,” Hunk said.

“And that’s another anomaly.  His wounds are healing too quickly.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Shiro asked.

“Well… yes, I suppose it is, but I’d still like to know why.  I’m also detecting high levels of magnesium in his bloodstream – equal amounts as iron.”

Shiro sighed.  “I don’t think we’re going to get any answers staring at that little chart.  And for that matter… As concerned and curious as I am about how he survived, I just want to be grateful he’s still with us right now.  Whatever it is that saved him, protected him… I want to believe it’s a good thing.  For now, at least.  We’ll come back to it when we’ve got Lance back, safe and healthy.”

Shiro said as much, but his stomach felt like lead.  Whatever had happened to his teammate, his friend – he could only hope Lance had consented.  He knew what the alternative felt like.

Nothing for it but to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your support! I was having my freak-outs about work stuff, not writing. Ironically, this fic is one of the only things in my life right now that ISN'T stressing me out. Whomp whomp


	13. Magnesium

Lance almost felt like he could hear them all milling around.  The last time he’d been in the healing pods (had that only been a week ago?) he’d been dead to the world, waking only once it was finished doing its business.  This time, he felt… detached.  Floating.  The world was an abstract painting of vibrant colors, slashing through the darkness.  Warmer and cooler temperatures swirled around his skin lazily, the gel of the pod doing whatever it was that made healing possible.  It was a beautiful moment of peace.  More than anything, Lance needed that.

And then the pod opened and the world became sharp and painful all over again.

Not in the literal sense.  All his injuries were healed up, just like they were supposed to be.  He raised his right hand – there was a starburst mark in the center of his palm, a matching one on the other side.  A light touch revealed another scar along the side of his face from where his cheek had been sliced open.  He could only hope it wasn’t too visible.

“Lance!” Hunk yelled, and the whole team whipped their heads around to stare at Lance.

Shiro made to approach but Hunk literally shoved him out of the way and grabbed Lance into a bear hug of epic proportions.  Lance gave a tired chuckle and tried hugging back as best he could with his arms pinned to his sides.

“Hey, buddy.  Missed you nerds,” he said into Hunk’s shoulder.

Pidge handed him two tiny objects – new hearing aids.  Were those translucent silicon grips?  And radio frequency setting dials?  Shit, she’d gotten fancy.  He’d have to get her something nice next time they went planet-side.  Hunk put him down long enough for him to shove them in his ears.  Pidge beamed.  “And us nerds missed you.  Everything’s painfully boring without you around.”

“With only Keith’s sense of humor to sustain you?  Yeah, I’d imagine.”

“I am right here.  I hear every word you’re saying.  Why do you guys keep doing this?” Keith griped.

“Because it’s hilarious to watch you get bent out of shape,” Pidge answered.

“It’s so easy, too.”

“It really is.”

Keith groaned and slapped a hand over his face so he wouldn’t have to look at them.

Allura cut in.  “Lance, are you… feeling well?  From what we could tell, the healing pod’s scans revealed some… anomalies.”

Lance breathed for a moment, remembering how.  “Listen, I’m gonna explain.  I promise.  I don’t get all of it myself, but whatever I haven’t picked up, I’m sure Abi can clarify.  We’ll get to that.”  He slumped a little, letting Hunk support more of his weight.  “But first, please just let me rest a little.  Adrenaline kept me going before, but now that’s run out, so I’m on fumes only.  She said this wouldn’t be a problem, so I don’t know why I feel this tired,” he murmured.

Allura frowned.  “The pod should have given you all the rest you require.  Is there something wrong with them?”

“I doubt it.  Sounds like emotional exhaustion, not physical exhaustion,” Shiro said.  His eyes were trained on the floor, the rest of him a million miles away.  “I was like that after… After I woke up in Keith’s shack.”

“Sleep,” Hunk concluded.  “Sleep and some food in you, and then we can talk.  Take it easy for a bit, if we can.”

“I cannot explain to you how on-board with that I am,” Lance said.  He shuffled through the throng, taking a left.

“Uh, Lance?  Aren’t the barracks the other way?” Keith asked.

“The barracks are that way, but the lounge is this way.”  He looked up, visibly drooping more with every passing minute.  “If it’s okay, I don’t think I want to sleep alone for a while.”

Shiro nodded, a sad smile on his face.  “I’m not sure any of us want to let you out of our sight for very long, either.  As evidenced by us all spending time in the pod room.”  Lance actually managed to huff a laugh.  A real smile from Shiro, and then Lance was being scooped up in one warm arm and one cool arm and carried to the lounge.

In what felt like the blink of an eye, the others had set up a makeshift bed on the big couch, complete with the pillow from Lance’s own room (Hunk knew he could never sleep on any pillow but his own) and a big fluffy blanket that might have been from Allura’s own private stash.

He was out like a light.  He’d never admit it, but it was really nice to be coddled sometimes.

* * *

Lance woke up to the smell of… bananas.  Of all things.

“The hell…?”

“Oh hey!  You’re up!” Pidge said.  “So I teamed up with Hunk and managed to synthesize banana oil.  It’s pretty much the only flavoring I remember how to make from organic chem lab.  So we mixed it with the goo and it’s actually much more palatable now.  You can pretend it’s banana pudding if you ignore it being green.”

“There’s always room for pudding,” Lance said, sitting up.

“That’s the spirit.  Also Hunk is trying to make soup stock from what I think is a frozen animal carcass.  Not sure what it is, really.  It was in the pantry.”

“Agree to let Keith be the first taste-tester?”

“Agreed.  That way if it’s poisonous, we’ll have some warning.”

“I’m right here!  Right here!” Keith said from the table.  “Stop doing the thing!”

“Love ya, Shnookums,” Lance said, blowing a kiss.

“You’re feeling better, I take it?” said Shiro from the doorway.  It looked like he’d just come back from a shower.  His hair was still dripping in his face a little bit.

“…Sort of.  I don’t feel quite so tired, but I’m still feeling a little… off?  I don’t know how to explain it,” Lance said.  “Maybe food will fix it.  No clue.”

“Food fixes everything!” Hunk yelled from the kitchen.

“There.  You see?”

Lance really did feel off.  He’d keep forgetting to breathe here and there, only belatedly bothering to do so later, and even then it felt like a perfunctory action.  He didn’t actually feel hungry, either.  He hadn’t been fed in upwards of three or four days, counting the time spent in the healing pod.  He’d lost quite a bit of blood in that time, and his body would have needed to expend a metric fuck-ton of energy to patch him up the first part of the way before the healing pods took up the slack.  Judging by the fact that he’d scarred over at all, his body had gotten pretty far on its own.

More than that, his skin felt wrong.  Normally, he would want to jump up and hug everyone.  Now the very idea of it made him uncomfortable.  He’d hug them if it them feel better, but some trace of panic would bloom in his gut at the physical contact.  The clanging Hunk was doing in the kitchen was making him twitch.  He idly rubbed his hands together to warm them.  Nothing worked.  Still a core of coldness that ate away at him.

_Abi?_

**Yes?**

_You said it was a secret.  All this ‘bond’ stuff._

**It was.  But now it is necessary for them to know.  If you need me to clarify anything, or if you simply don’t want to go through the whole explanation, I can take over.**

Lance swallowed.  Judging from the concepts that had been conveyed with the term ‘take over’, Shir’abi could literally possess Lance’s body and speak with his mouth now.  That was a whole new level of personal space violation.

Why was he being like this?  He shouldn’t be trying to push her away.  She was a part of his soul whether he liked it or not, and she was obviously just trying to help in her own way.

**Lance?  Are you all right?**

_Huh?  Oh, yeah, of course.  I think I’ll try and handle it myself.  Anything I don’t know off the top of my head, I’ll ask you._

**I’ll be ready to answer.**

_Thanks, fam._

“All right, let’s get this over with,” he said out loud, lurching up from the couch and heading to the table.

Hunk emerged from the kitchens with a cart full of bowls, seven of the green goo (which, sure enough, did smell remarkably like bananas) and seven of a dark broth, steam rising from it.  Lance couldn’t make out any smell at all from that one.

“Eat and talk.  We’re not going to have you collapse on us again,” Hunk said.

Coran and Allura had dropped in at some point, likely paged there by Shiro or something.  They took their own seats around the cramped table (it was a far cry from the formal dining room that could probably seat a few dozen at once).

“I must admit, I’m very curious as to your condition,” Allura said, reaching for the broth first.  The paladins all held their breath as she popped the spoon into her mouth.  She noticed, her eyes narrowing.  “Any particular reason you are gaping at me?”

“Hm.  If she’s not been poisoned, it must be safe,” Lance murmured.

“I concur,” Pidge said.

“Wait, that could have been poisoned?!” Coran yelped, gaping at his own bowl with a newfound horror.

“You insult my cooking!” Hunk said.

Allura and Keith somehow rolled their eyes in unison.  Lance couldn’t decide which of them had been the bad influence on the other.

“So, I mentioned it before, and I wasn’t just, like, fucking with you or anything:  I’m pretty sure I’m immortal.  That’s what Abi says.  It’s a recent development.”

They all went quiet, eyes locked on him.

“…How?” Shiro finally asked.

“There’s some sort of ancient ritual that binds your life force to your Lion, and I did it by whoopsie.”

Keith snarfed his broth.  “Only you, Lance.  Only you would end up immortal by accident.”

“It’s not funny, asshole,” Lance growled.  Keith looked taken aback.  They all did.

He took a deep breath.  Calmed down.  As much as he could, anyway.  “It’s more than just that.  I guess I don’t need to sleep or eat to survive anymore, or if I do, it’s in an amount much less than what it was before.  I think I don’t need to breathe, either.  I _can_ , I just don’t have to in order to survive.  My body temperature also is really low for some reason.  And…”  Lance sighed and wrapped his hands around the half-empty bowl of broth.  Thin curls of frost formed over the surface of the liquid, quickly spreading to form a solid sheet of frozen soup.

Six pairs of eyes went huge, darting between Lance’s face and the bowl.

“The ice in the cell…” Shiro said, voice thin.  “I thought they just…”

“Nah, they weren’t trying to freeze me to death.  I was trying to get the hang of this stuff.  I’m not very good at it yet, but I can do a little without having to think too hard about it anymore,” Lance said.

Hunk shook his head.  “This doesn’t make any sense.  Where does it go?  Heat has to go somewhere; that’s basic thermodynamics!”

“That’s the tip of the iceberg – yes, pun intended,” Pidge said.  “How the hell can you avoid breathing or eating or sleeping?  You need-“ her eyes widened- “Oh.”

“’Oh’?”

“Magnesium.”

Allura gasped and clapped her hands together.  “Of course!”

Lance squinted at her.  “The fuck does magnesium have to do with anything?”

“Before you woke up, Allura ran some scans, and one of them said you had elevated levels of magnesium in your blood,” Pidge explained.  “Swap out the central iron ion of a heme group with a magnesium ion, replace a hydrogen atom with a carbon chain, connect two side chains, and you’ve transformed regular hemoglobin into chlorophyll.  Your human cells take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, and your plant cells take in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen.  As long as you’ve got sunlight, or any kind of input of energy, you can turn carbon dioxide into sugar chains, which then get digested by your own system.  Just breathing in a little additional CO2 from our atmosphere might sustain you for a long while.”

Lance shook his head incredulously.  “I can’t believe this shit.  I really am a sad little bean sprout.”

“I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but I think I agree with you,” Keith said.

“My best friend is part plant,” Hunk said.  “Can’t say I saw that one coming.”

“…So that’s how you survived the vacuum of space?  By being – and I can’t believe I’m entertaining this – _immortal_?” Pidge asked.

“That’s about the gist of it, yeah.  If you’re still feeling at all uncertain, there’s a lot of testing that’s already been done.  One of the Druids thought I might be bonded and decided to… double-check.”  Lance’s voice was flat and dead.  He didn’t have to expound.  His audience paled, but Shiro looked faintly ill on top of that.  It would be cruel to tell them the whole of it when they could sort of figure it out themselves.

“…I’m sorry, Lance,” Shiro said.

“It’s not your fault.  I already said that.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t regret that any of it happened,” Keith said.

“Whatever.  The important part is that the Druid wasn’t the only person there.  She… I don’t know, put in for a video chat with Zarkon himself while the whole thing was going on.”

“Zarkon?!” Allura said.  “You saw him?”

“Just his face, but yeah.  Turns out, he’s a bonded paladin, too.  Nice job on the full disclosure there, Princess.  You’ve pitted us all against a dictator-slash-genocidal-maniac who, by the way, happens to be _immortal_ and therefore impossible to defeat unless Voltron is destroyed, except for that fun little caveat where Zarkon’s influence can only be curbed _with_ Voltron.  The moral of the story is that everything’s gone to shit and we’re powerless to do anything about it.  Happy trails.”  And with that, Lance tucked into his goop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another 10.5 hour shift coming up. goodie. [bangs head against desk until blood comes out of my ears]


	14. Voidlight

 

The table was in nothing short of an uproar, not that Lance felt much of a need to pay attention.

“Zarkon’s a fucking paladin?!  When was _that_ going to come up?” Keith yelled.

“I swear, I didn’t know!  It must have been long before my time!” Allura cried.

“Wait, he’s immortal, too?  So it really is impossible to beat him.”

“No, it’s impossible to kill him.  Beating him is something different.”

“You don’t get it, Hunk.  We have to kill him to beat him.  In politics especially, you have to make sure any resistance fighters don’t have a central figure to rally around, and if we leave Zarkon alive, that’s just begging for a resurgence of his followers the minute we quote-unquote ‘beat him’.  Much as I don’t like the idea of killing off anyone we don’t like, it’s the only way to prevent the Galran armies from just picking up where they left off.  An empire that’s been on the rise for more than 10,000 years isn’t going to go away overnight, particularly not when the worst thing that’s happened to their leader is the equivalent of a punch in the nose,” Pidge said.

“He doesn’t have a nose.  I didn’t see one, anyway,” Lance offered.

“Okay, so we’re fighting a buff Voldemort.  Fantastic.”

“What’s he even the paladin _of_?  Like, which Lion?”

“Probably the Black Lion.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Zarkon’s the right temperament for being a leg or something.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a leg!”

“Sorry, Hunk, I’m just saying.  He seems like an awfully prideful guy and wouldn’t settle for being anything other than the self-appointed leader.”

“In retrospect, we should have guessed this whole ‘immortal’ thing the minute we found out the exact same guy has been heading up an empire for more than ten thousand years straight.”

“Is it weird that I thought Zarkon was just, like, a title or something?  You know, like how the name of the Dread Pirate Roberts gets passed down through the generations.  They all go by the same name, but they’re different people, and the old ones go off to retire somewhere in the Caymans or whatever,” Hunk said.

“I…” Allura paused.  “I might have had an inkling that it was the same Zarkon I knew in my time from before.  My life force is bonded to the Lions.”

“…Which in turn means any bonded paladin is also bound to your life force through the middleman,” Shiro muttered.

“Exactly.  I didn’t ponder it much, but I’ve always been able to feel Zarkon’s life force a bit.  And recently, I started to feel yours as well, Lance.”

Lance looked up, apprehension on his face.

Allura stared down at the bowl in her hands.  “I was grateful for it.  It was proof you were still alive.  Perhaps not safe, but alive.  I wasn’t sure what the bond was, or why I was so certain of your survival, but… I didn’t really want to examine it too closely in case it turned out to be only a hollow, naïve kind of optimism.”

Lance gave her a crooked smile.  “Guess something good came of it, after all.”

“’Something good’?  The hell you mean by that?  Dude, at this point, you’re the only member of Team Voltron who can stand up to an immortal warlord and have a shot at winning,” Keith said.  “We’re all really fucking vulnerable in comparison to you, and if you can figure out just what it is you did to become bonded, you need to tell us so we can-“

“ _Fuck no._ ”

Silence.

Lance’s eyes were blazing.  An expression of pure bitterness twisted his features, and Keith felt something in him break a little under that gaze.

“It’s not a game.  It’s not a joke.  It’s not a cute little fucking power-up in an MMORPG.  You don’t understand what it is you’re asking for, and until you do, I’m not telling you a fucking thing about how it’s done,” Lance snarled.

He stood abruptly, pushing away from the table and moving to leave.  He paused.  “Thanks for the food, Hunk.  It was really good.”  He turned on his heel and left, his shoulders slumping from anger to something more like defeat.

“…He’s not okay, is he?” Pidge said quietly.

“Not even remotely,” Hunk said.

“I have never seen him like this,” Allura said.  “I wasn’t sure he was capable of it.”

“Oh, he’s capable of it, all right,” Keith muttered.  “I know he means well or whatever, but the odds of at least one of us dying during this whole campaign are really damn high unless we can do something to prevent that.  Call me crazy, but I actually like you guys on rare occasion and would be put out if I had to bury any of you.  Does he seriously have a problem with us trying to survive by whatever means necessary?”

Shiro shook his head.  “That’s not it.  I don’t think you quite get it.”

“What’s there to get?”

Shiro sighed.  “I understand your point, but I understand Lance’s, too.  I should go try to talk to him.”

Keith snorted.  “Better you than me.  He might actually try to bite my face off if I go into the same room as him.”

“Guess I’ll start cleaning up the plates,” Pidge said.

* * *

Shiro went straight to Lance’s room and knocked.  Nobody home.

The training room was also empty.

And the pod room.

Eventually, he noticed the door to the third-level airlock was open.  Lance sat inside on the floor, headphones around his neck.  A tinny, soft song played through them, a calming tune.  Lance didn’t acknowledge his presence in the slightest.

Shiro sat down next to Lance, not quite touching him.  He was silent for a while, trying to give the both of them time to build up the mental strength necessary to get through a conversation like this.

“…He didn’t mean it like that,” Shiro said eventually.

“That’s exactly what he meant it like, Shiro,” Lance said.

“And if he’d stopped to consider your side of it, he wouldn’t have suggested it.”

“Wouldn’t he?”

Shiro sighed.  “He had a point, but he still shouldn’t have said it the way he did.  Not that that gave you leave to chew him out for not understanding, but… we get it.  It’s barely been a day for you.”

Lance stared at his hands in his lap, the gentle notes of a piano curling through the air.

“…I haven’t felt right in a while,” he said at last.  “I didn’t even realize.  It’s a gradual process, so… it never occurred to me.”  He rubbed his throat absently, and Shiro’s brain conjured up the image of faint bruising in the shape of a hand on Lance’s neck.  “I didn’t ask for any of it,” he said.

“I know you didn’t.”

“It’s my fault we went to Arus.  I just _had_ to get in the giant robot lion and make friends and follow her instructions and leave home forever, and now we might never be able to go back, even if by some crazy random happenstance we succeed and free the universe and blah, blah, blah.”

“Pidge would have left anyway to find her family.  I would have left too, both to help Pidge and to escape my Galra pursuers.  You saved my life and my sanity when you did that, Lance,” Shiro said.

“What about Hunk?  He’s got a family.  He’s got dreams and aspirations, and the talent and drive to get him there.  He’s got no reason to be out here, and I basically kidnapped him.  Look where it got us.  I destroyed my best friend’s future.”

“No, you-“

“Just let me get this shit out for a minute, Shiro,” Lance said.  “Sometimes, you’ve just got to vent and let yourself stew in it for a while, and then you start to let go.”

Shiro swallowed.  Neither one of them was exactly the poster boy for good self-care habits, or good mental health.  He wasn’t sure what Lance needed.  He wasn’t sure what anyone needed, but at least he could be here.  Pick up the pieces once they were done falling apart.  Maybe it would help.  Maybe it would make everything worse.  Either way, abandoning Lance when he was like this was not an option.  He’d stay.  He nodded, and Lance leaned back against the wall, staring up at the reinforced ceiling of the airlock chamber.

“I was always a fuck-up on Earth.  I goofed off, never did my homework.  I got nearly perfect scores on tests and stuff, but I always ended up with, like, Ds and Cs in everything because I didn’t do the assignments.  Teachers all hated me.  Fellow students hated me.  I was – am – really annoying and loud all the time, and I know that.  They think I don’t know that?  I know, trust me.  What few friends I have basically just sorta… tolerate me.  If they can get through a whole hour without glaring at me, I call it a win.  But you know?  My fucking up wasn’t an issue.  It’s not like anybody got hurt.

“It’s different now,” Lance said, slumping.  “now we’re fucking _Voltron_ and an entire enslaved universe is counting on us to… not suck, I guess.  And now my being a fuck-up actually matters.  It didn’t before, and now it does.  Entire planets, solar systems, galaxies even – they all count on us to give them their freedom back.  The Galra enslaved, beat, torture, and kill them.  Steal their shit and their kids, destroy their planets, and leave them all to die.  We saw that on the Balmera.  Every single time I fuck up, there’s at least a handful of people who are dead somewhere because of it.  It _matters_ now.  When I got taken, did you respond to any distress beacons?” Lance asked.

Shiro’s guilty expression told him all he needed to know.

“There you have it.  Same thing for when I was injured and in the pod, huh?  And when a couple days off were proposed.  One single mistake.  I have exactly one job to do, and when I screw up, that’s days of suffering I’m putting people through.  Pretty much anybody would make a better pilot for Abi than me, but I guess we’re all stuck with a shitty Blue Paladin.  Especially now that there’s no way for you to get rid of me properly.”  His voice cracked.  “My survival is actually a hindrance to the entire universe.  How many people can say that?”  He curled in on himself, breath hitching as he tried to hide the sobs that were inevitable.

“And I know that this whole ‘immortal’ thing is probably good in the long run.  It’s an advantage, and I’m going to be expected to use it, but… I feel like I’m not even me anymore.  I keep being surprised when I see my own face in a reflection or whatever because how can I exist?  How can I even have a physical form?  I don’t understand and it feels wrong.  My body feels really cold all the time now.  I can’t warm up.  Nothing works.  Breathing?  Eating?  Sleeping?  What the hell do I have that could possibly make me feel normal and human?  I don’t know what the fuck this is, but I want it to stop.  I want to go home.  I don’t want to think about how I might have to watch my family die around me while I don’t age.  Everybody I care about back home is going to die before me.  I’m going to have to bury them.  And that’s the brightest possible future that awaits me, if we beat Zarkon somehow and get to go home at all.”  Tears ran down his face, soaking his sleeves.  Lance couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck.  “And Keith?”  He snorted, a miserable noise.  “He acts like all of that’s a good thing.  Like being in pain forever instead of just fucking dying and getting it over with is a good thing.  Like losing bits and pieces of yourself is okay.  Like I should be _grateful_.”

Shiro couldn’t hold himself back anymore.  He pulled one of Lance’s arms free, wrapping his hand around Lance’s.  The Galra hand.

“I get it.”  He looked Lance dead in the eye, voice soft.  “You know I do.  This arm…” His mouth twisted.  “It’s the only thing that’s kept me alive a lot of the time.  I should be grateful.  It does so much that my regular arm didn’t, but I’d give absolutely anything to have flesh and blood again.  ‘Losing bits and pieces of yourself’, huh?  Trust me, I understand.  Nobody asked me for permission, either.”

Lance leaned in, just resting his forehead against the prosthetic shoulder for a moment.  True enough, the limb was cold.  Unnaturally so.  Just like…

Just like Lance.

When anyone had touched him before, it felt like they were impossibly hot, a constant reminder of what a real human was supposed to feel like.  Shiro’s arm wasn’t like that – it was the same heat as Lance.  It felt… normal.  He felt normal.

Nothing to do but cry himself dry and pray Shiro didn’t think the less of him for it.

Of course, Shiro let him.  Just held his hand and waited patiently.

Shiro’s voice was very soft when he finally spoke, like he was worried Lance might spook or something.  “I’ve been thinking… the entire first generation of Voltron paladins had to have done the bonding thing, right?  That’s the whole reason it was made.”

Lance wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

“Well… Can each Lion have more than one bond going at a time?”

Lance shook his head.

“Then clearly,” Shiro said, “considering that we don’t have a bunch of ancient paladins running around, there has to be a way to negate the bond.  To go back to normal once the mission is over and you don’t need the advantage of immortality anymore.”

Lance sucked in a breath.  “Wait… Then, does that mean…?”

“We can get you back to normal.”

“Not just that,” Lance said.  “If we can revoke _my_ bond… we can revoke Zarkon’s, too.”

As unnatural as it felt, both of them smiled slowly through tear-stained cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Lance was listening to is Voidlight by Thomas Ferkol. I'm actually feeling... weirdly positive today??? like how did that happen


	15. Book Binding

“So anyway, that’s probably what they’re talking about right now,” Hunk said, finishing up drying the dishes.

“That’s… incredible.  How do you _do_ that?” Keith asked.

“Do what?”

“Know everybody so well.  I mean, I’ve known Shiro for practically ever, and that’s exactly what I can picture him doing.  Lance, I don’t know as well, so…”  He shrugged.

“Well, apart from not wanting to put all of us through the same shit he’s going through, Lance has one last reason for not telling us how to be immortal.”

“Really?  What’s that, then?” Pidge asked.

“Shiro.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?  What’s Shiro got to do with it?”

“If Zarkon’s a bonded paladin for Black already, Shiro can’t bond with Black.  We could all be bonded and therefore immortal pretty easily, but Shiro would be left behind.  Vulnerable.  The last thing Lance wants is for Shiro to be in that position.”

Keith sat back at the table and winced.  Yeah, he could picture it.  The other paladins might have to throw themselves into danger to keep Shiro alive, no matter the cost.  While they couldn’t die protecting Shiro (or anyone else for that matter), they could still be hurt.  Judging by Lance’s screams in the video they’d been sent, they could _definitely_ still feel pain.  Shiro would blame himself for putting his teammates through that, and they’d all try and convince him it wasn’t his fault, and then he’d feel even worse, and the whole thing would spiral out of control.

“…This whole thing is bullshit,” Keith muttered.

“Amen, brother.”

“All right, fine, I’ll get off his back about telling us what he did.  It’s not like any of us are stupid enough to do it without thinking it through – I just want to know how he did it so if we need to, we can.  Give us the right to make our own decisions, you know?”

“I hear you, but Lance has had a shitty week and needs some distance before he can make good choices,” Hunk said.

Pidge snorted.  “’A shitty week’ is putting it mildly.  I’m surprised we’re not seeing more symptoms of PTSD from him.  Shiro sometimes has flashbacks and panic attacks and nightmares and all of it.  He acts like it’s not happening and that our problems are more important than his, and so he doesn’t get any better.  Lance is going to try and pull the same shit, I just know it.”

“Unless those two can talk to each other about it like rational adults?” Allura suggested.

All three paladins stared at her a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Oh my God!”

“Lance?  As a rational adult?  What year is it?!”

“I’m fucking dying.  Holy shit.  Those two being well-adjusted.  Incredible.”

“It was just an idle thought,” Allura said.

“You’re very optimistic and I envy you that,” Keith said.  “I don’t think that’s how it’s gonna play out, but you are welcome to harbor hope.”

She glared at him until he stopped giggling.

There was a small knock on the wall outside the kitchen, and they turned to see Lance and Shiro standing in the doorway hesitantly.  Hunk and Keith immediately tensed, noticing red eyes and blotchy cheeks.

“Everything okay?” Hunk asked.

Lance nodded, and Shiro put a hand on his shoulder, trying to be supportive.

Keith couldn’t make his own mouth shut up.  “Yeah, listen man, I’m sorry I was all up in your business.  I mean, I still think I was right, but I didn’t mean to be a punk about it.”

Lance chuffed a little laugh out and grinned.  “You were being a whiny bitch about it is what you were doing.”

Keith rolled his eyes.  “Yeah, whatever.”  He grabbed his cup of water just to avoid looking at Lance’s smug face (and trying to ignore the tear tracks down that same face that may or may not have partially been his fault).

“By the way,” Shiro said, “We might have figured out a way to negate Zarkon’s immortality and save the universe.”

Keith sprayed the water everywhere.  Shiro looked far too satisfied with himself for it to have been a coincidence.

“Wow.  That’s a very productive pep talk you two had, huh?” Hunk said.

“I’d like to think so,” Shiro said.

“So what is this method?  I’m quite interested,” Allura said.  “We know precious little about bonding in the first place, so how could you know how to influence it?”

“Simple logic,” Shiro said.  “Two pieces of evidence:  we haven’t met any of the paladins of old, and Lance was able to bond in the first place, implying that there isn’t another bonded Blue paladin already wandering around somewhere.  If the first generation of paladins bonded, they must have broken that bond somehow.  If it’s possible, we can figure out how to do it.”

“And how do you know the process of breaking a bond with a Lion can be done without the paladin’s consent?” Allura asked.

Shiro winced.  “We don’t.  But it’s worth a try?”

Pidge looked thoughtful.  “If there’s any literature on how to do it, the Princess’s documents should have it, but – Allura, you said you’d never heard of it?”

Allura sighed.  “It was briefly alluded to in an ancient text that had since been transcribed and translated into a thousand different languages over the years.  It’s not the most trustworthy of sources, having left out a number of key details.  It also mentioned nothing at all about breaking a bond.  Completely useless.”

“Great,” Keith said.  “So we’re just as screwed as we were at the start.”

Hunk smiled.  “Not necessarily.  Abi explained bonding to you, Lance.  Maybe she can explain un-bonding?”

They all turned to look at Lance, and he shrank under their eyes.

Honestly… he’d been feeling a little queasy since Shiro brought it up.  It felt almost distant, like how it felt to have someone put pressure on an area after a topical anesthetic had been applied.  The more he turned his thoughts to his Lion, the worse he felt.

Was he picking up on her emotions?

“I… give me a minute, guys.  I should probably talk to her about this alone,” he said.  Lance turned without waiting for an answer and started on the trek to Shir’Abi’s hanger.

The horrible feeling in his stomach tripled, numbing his legs.  He stumbled down the hallways, cursing for the ten millionth time the sheer distance between anywhere and the hangers.  “Abi?” he mumbled.  “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t get a proper response, just a garbled mess of guilt and anger and shame and above all, _loneliness_.

Lance broke into a run, stomach be damned.

After a certain point, most of the transportation method was automated, so Lance didn’t need to try to stay upright on wobbly legs, thank God.  It deposited him directly into Abi’s cockpit, and what had been bad before was suddenly unbearable.  Lance slumped in the seat, gasping for air he didn’t need, trembling.

He found it in him to get out a couple words.  “Abi?  Abi, girl, I’m here.  I’m here, it’s okay, I’m not leaving.  We’re going to be okay.  Please tell me what’s wrong; this isn’t like you.”

Her response was something he felt in his bones, however much they felt like salt water right now.

**You _are_ leaving.**

“…Abi?”

The accusation of it was a gut-punch.

 **You’re planning to leave me.  You don’t want me.  I’m sorry the idea of staying with me is so horrible to you.**   She flashed him an image of the conversation he’d had with Shiro just minutes before, and unspeakable pain interlaced with the thought.

He couldn’t help but be horrified.  He knew they were mentally connected.  He knew she could hear his thoughts, and that emotions carried over the bond more strongly than specific words or concepts.  She would know he was hurting.  She would want to find out why.  She would do the same thing he just did, and nose around in her partner’s business until she got an answer.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.  “Please, that’s not how I meant it.  Please.  Abi, I’m just a kid.  I want to be able to go home and be a person again.  I l… I love you.”  He felt her shudder.  They both knew it wasn’t something he could say lightly.

**…But you love them more.**

“Please don’t ask me to choose, Abi.  I can’t make those kinds of choices.  I’m not smart enough or mentally stable enough or any of that.  I can’t just sit down and pick at the drop of a hat.”

 **You did, though, and you chose them** , she said.  **In all fairness… I knew this would happen.  It’s happened every time before.  I knew.  I hoped you wouldn’t be like the others, and so it isn’t right for me to take my disappointment out on you.  It isn’t your fault – I should have known better.**

Lance pitched forward, catching himself on his arms on the smooth metal of the dash.  He leaned his forehead down to press against it, cool and calming.

“Nothing’s being decided now.  We have work to do.  You, me, the rest of Team Voltron… we have a lot to do before we can even start _thinking_ about whether or not we should stay bonded,” he said.

**You cried at the mere thought of staying bonded to me.  Those were your real feelings.**

“I cried at the thought of losing the people I care about, and funnily enough, you’re fucking one of them,” Lance said, suddenly angry.  “You think I don’t give a shit about you?  Search me.  My whole head.  Go on, root around in there and tell me what you see when I think of you.”

He could feel her hesitate, feel her gently brush his consciousness, sift through.  He let himself relax a little and open up.

Without prodding back, there was no way Lance could tell exactly what Shir’Abi saw in his mind, but he did feel her reaction to whatever it was she saw.  Trepidation at first.  Then surprise.  Then tentative hope, and joy.

“See?  What did I tell you?”

 **…Don’t get ahead of yourself, boy,** she responded.  Lance could practically hear a smile in the teasing tone.  **And don’t think this means that I like you.**

“I’d never,” he said.  “I do seriously need to know how to fuck over Zarkon, though.”

 **Good riddance to bad rubbish,** she said, and Lance cracked up.  **Would that I could tell you just how to throw him to the wind, but the paladins of old usually shut off their mental connections with me when they… well, when they decided they didn’t want to be with me anymore.  I never observed whatever ritual was used to break the bond.**

“Then… there’s nothing we can do about it,” Lance said, sighing.  “You were kind of our last shot.”

**I wouldn’t be so sure as to that.  I may not know how it’s done, but it’s possible records were kept alongside us all these millennia.  The information would be kept close in case of an emergency.  It is equally possible that Zarkon has located these records and destroyed them so as to ensure his perpetual immortality.  The imbecile.  What kind of monster burns books?**

“The super-douchey kind,” Lance agreed.

**Exactly.  Barbaric.  So glad we’re on the same page.**

“Was that a pun?”

**A what?**

Lance sat there for a solid twenty seconds of silence, utterly blindsided by the fact that because the Lions had no concept of formal language, they also had no concept of what a pun was.  Shir’Abi had gone her whole existence without ever perceiving a pun.

This was by far the worst thing that Lance had heard this whole week.

“We’ll get to that later, I promise you.  But anyway, do you know where these extra records or whatever might have been kept?”

**Where they’d be the most useful.  With us.**

* * *

“-And so that’s what she said,” Lance finished.

“Ohhhh,” Pidge said.  “I think I know what she means.  Remember the cave in the desert back home where Blue was?  All the carvings on the walls?”

Much nodding.

“What if those were, like, some kind of instruction manual the former paladin tried to leave for their successor?”

“Well, damn,” Lance said, sitting back in his seat.  “Wish I’d paid more attention at the time.”

Shiro waved a hand for a second.  “Wait, wait, wait, hold on.  We’ve seen plenty of Altean script and I can say for certainty the runes in that cave weren’t Altean.  How do we know those carvings weren’t done by, I don’t know, the locals at the time the Blue Lion was dropped off?”

“Because no humans were around modern-day southwest United States ten thousand years ago,” Keith said.  “The ancient Sumerians were pretty much the only organized population back then, and they were trying to invent the wheel.  And you can’t say the carvings were done later because they specifically had a drawing of a fully-formed Voltron, which wouldn’t have been something they could know about after the Alteans left Earth.”

“Good point.  Why would you even know that, though?” Hunk said.

Keith shrugged.  “Same reason I know Marilyn Monroe had six toes and that squirrels can’t catch rabies:  you hear a random factoid in grade school and that shit sticks with you for the rest of your life.”

They all nodded sagely.  Sounded reasonable enough.

Pidge began ticking off on her fingers.  “All right, so… we’re looking for a complete set of runes that are closeby.  Black Lion was kept in the Castle, so that’s a bust.  Red Lion was on a Galra ship and we have no idea where it was stashed before the Galra found it, so that’s also out.  Green was enclosed in a fuckton of vines, not a cave.  I didn’t see any carvings there, but then, maybe the Green paladin just assumed any other Green paladins would be smart enough to figure it all out without an instruction manual.  Yellow was on a planet controlled by the Galra, so that’s going to be a giant pain in the ass to get to, plus we risk them bombing the piss out of the caves and having the whole thing collapse, destroying the information we need.”  She turned to the whole table.  “Blue’s the only viable place we’ve got left that might have useful, intact data.  We have to go back to Earth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those with limited context of Persian culture, you don’t say stuff like “I love you”. Like, that’s the kind of thing you may not even feel comfortable saying on your wedding night, that’s how much that phrase is saving up for something special. On the flip side, everybody constantly talks about death and dying like it’s no biggie.


	16. Solder Soldat

“I let myself get excited, and that, I think, is where my mistake lay,” Lance groaned.

“Quit whining and hand me the stripper,” Pidge said.  Lance guffawed.  “The _wire_ stripper you demented chinchilla.”

Luckily, being roommates with Hunk for a year meant Lance knew what everything looked like.  “The mini one or the industrial-sized one?”

“Mini.”

“You got it.”  He chucked it her way and she caught it with ease, barely taking the time to look away from her work.  For some reason, it felt like they got along better, synced up better, ever since the rescue mission.  To be fair, they had done a lot of psychic back-and-forth nonsense through their Lions.  Maybe that was it.  Whatever it was, Lance was enjoying it.

“But still, like, I thought we’d get to warp right home and it’s yay time all around.”

“We do that and if a Galra ship is anywhere nearby, it’s going to be a big damn flag saying, ‘Hey! It’s our home planet!  Please take it hostage!’  I’d like it if we avoided that whole situation,” Pidge said.  She clipped at some wires, pulling off the protective rubber coating and flicking it away.  “Take this back for a sec,” she said, tossing the stripper back at Lance.  She twisted the wires together, pulling the leftover rubber together over the new joint.  “Hey, Hunk!  Can you try powering her up?”

“Can do!” Hunk yelled down from the cockpit of Yellow.  “Lemme know when you’re clear!”

Lance and Pidge scrambled down, Lance making sure to grab the box of tools off of Yellow’s paw.

A deep, purring kind of hum filled the air, and Yellow’s eyes lit up.  She stood, slow and steady as she’d ever been.

“We’re clear!  Flick the switch, big guy!” Lance hollered.

The Yellow Lion made an ominous buzzing noise, then bits and pieces of its surface began to flicker, fading in and out.  Minor spluttering, and then it disappeared from view entirely, leaving the hangar empty.

“Success!” Pidge cried, and Lance high-fived her.

Hunk and Yellow materialized again a few seconds later.  “It worked all right, then?”

“Eh, it was a little bit of a rocky start, but it got going in the end.  Before you head out into view after putting up cloaking, I’d suggest waiting a couple of seconds.  Like, ten.  _Then_ jump out from behind a rock or whatever.”

“Wait a tick, don’t get shot.  Got it,” Hunk said.  Yellow’s jaw yawned wide and Hunk slid down, hopping out.

“So, on to Red?” Lance asked.

Pidge made a disgusted face.  “Keith, big whiny pissbaby he is, told me to give him the instructions and he’d do it himself.  Didn’t want me touching ‘his baby’, I guess.  What does he think is going to happen, honestly?  This is _me_ we’re talking about.  We’re souping up Shiro’s ride next.”

“He’s not here, though.  You think Black’s going to let us do whatever we want with her?” Hunk asked.

“Shiro said it’s cool, but let’s ask Black, just to be on the safe side,” Lance said.  _Hey, Abi?  Is Black cool with turning invisible?_

**…Black says she’s amenable.  She would like you to pay attention so she can contact you quickly if something goes amiss.**

“No goofing off.  Got it,” Lance said, already planning on goofing off.  He saluted the Lions with a multimeter.  “Guys?  Black says she’s down.”

“Cool.  Power screwdriver.  My shoulder’s going to give out at this rate,” Pidge said.

“Actually, can I do it?  I want to see how you’re getting around the thermoregulation systems.  I had to be up in the cockpit with Yellow so I couldn’t see what you were doing down there,” Hunk said.

“Huh?  Oh, yeah, sure.  And I’m not getting around the thermoregulation, I’m _using_ it.  Shuts off all external heating with adiabatic walling, and drops exotherm by enough to fool thermographs.  No scan’s going to pick you up out in space.  Radar and sonar would still pick you up in any place with atmo, though,” she said.

“That’s brilliant.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Lance tuned them out.  He’d gotten decent marks in physical chemistry, then promptly forgotten everything about it the minute he’d walked out of finals.  Nerds.

They were fiddling around with plating around Black’s flank, so they’d likely be using just screwdrivers for an obscenely long time.  No tools for him to hand off partway through.  He was going to be bored as sin.

Lance turned on the soldering iron.  Well, it was supposedly a soldering iron.  It glowed an eerie green ( _better than eerie magenta_ , a part of him said with a shudder) and didn’t need to be plugged in with anything.  It was basically a metal stick with a chisel tip that got really hot and pushed around metals with low melting points, so that was really all Lance needed to know to deem it a soldering iron.  He waved it around, watching the patterns it drew in the air.  He felt like a wizard or something waving a wand.

“ _Wingardium Leviosa_ ,” he said, swishing and flicking the iron at the closest allen wrench.  No dice.  “Pfft, lame.  Get all these other weird powers and I can’t even make stuff fly.  Disappoint.”

A loud clanging and a pissed yell from back by where Pidge and Hunk were futzing around.  “You guys good down there?”

“Uh- er, yeah!  Yeah, we are totally 100% fine and I definitely did not almost drop a really heavy plate sheet on anyone’s foot,” Hunk called back.

“As long as you kids are being safe,” Lance said, and turned back to messing around with Pidge’s toys.  Huh.  Come to think of it, he hadn’t ever seen what it looked like inside of anyone else’s Lion.  Everybody else had been inside Abi’s cockpit, but he’d never been invited to see the insides of the others.  Did they all look the same?  Did the paladins keep embarrassing personal effects in there?  Ten bucks said Hunk had a beautiful pencil portrait of Shay taped up somewhere in his.  Lance frowned.  What would Shiro have?  Most of his memories seemed like they’d be bittersweet.  He hadn’t even had time to go home for a spell the last time he’d touched down on Earth.  Just been strapped down and drugged by the very people he was supposed to be able to trust.  He’d never mentioned missing anyone dirt-side.  Never got emotionally connected with any of the people they’d saved over the months.  Maybe Shiro didn’t have pictures of his Earth buddies… but surely that didn’t mean he didn’t have any.

The old flashes of pain and guilt went through him, and Lance shivered.  Almost as if in response, Black lowered her head a fractional degree, opening her mouth a little.  The invitation was clear:  if he wanted to look, he was welcome to do so.

…Yeah, he was going to be a nosy busybody.

Maybe if it turned out to be as boring and barebones as he suspected it would be, he could find ways to spruce it up a little.  Give Shiro a nice surprise, make it feel more like home and less like a group of child soldiers fighting off a genocide with five rambunctious psychic metal cats.

Yeah.  Not shockingly, the interiors of the cockpits were similar across the board.  All of the Lions must have borrowed from the same basic construction plans with slight alterations, both for size and specific function.  It was odd, standing in a cockpit so like his own without the constant psychic hum of Abi in the back of his mind.  She was still there, but too distant.  She always felt louder somehow when they were in physical contact.

Lance wondered what Black’s voice would sound like.  In his head, Abi sounded much like his mother, but a little higher in pitch.  When his brain felt the need to interpret words in ASL instead of a spoken tongue, her mental hands always seemed so fluid, never staying still, lithe and light.  Black’s ‘voice’ would probably be deep and authoritative.  Lance was picturing Galadriel from Lord of the Rings; Cate Blanchett was a gift to the world.  Her ‘hands’ would move in tight, utilitarian patterns like a teacher’s, sharp in places, but still graceful under it all.

Black was bigger than Abi.  Heavier.  Armored to make a Kombat T98 jealous.  The air felt warmer here, and Lance felt, if not at home, at least safe.

Sure enough, the interior was otherwise boring.  Shiro didn’t have any fun little knickknacks.  They had to change that sometime soon.  Maybe when they dropped down to Earth they could hit up a photobooth and cram all seven of Team Voltron into one of them for a hot minute.  And then go for burgers and fries.  Lance groaned in sheer want of a good burger.  Whether he needed food to live or not was irrelevant – Arby’s curly fries and Jamocha shakes were honestly a solid reason to continue residence in this awful flesh prison of a body.  God bless America’s shitty food habits.  Hunk did his best with what he could, but no goop or mysterious alien meat could ever replace a Baconator.

There was more clanging around down below, which Lance ignored.  They knew what they were doing.  Probably.

He twirled the soldering iron in his fingers, humming something he’d forgotten the words to.  Feet up on the dash.  Man, Shiro’s chair was comfy.  Clearly molded to a different butt, which was a little weird, but otherwise tolerable.

Hm.  Lance didn’t remember seeing _that_ button in Shir’Abi’s cockpit.

He probably shouldn’t press it.  It wasn’t like he knew what it did.

Of course…

…if he knew what he was doing, it wouldn’t be science.

Outside, the Black Lion suddenly began vibrating, Pidge yelping and nearly falling off until Hunk grabbed her.  “What did you do?!” he cried.

“It wasn’t me – I didn’t even do anything!” she said.

“Well then who-?” Hunk cut himself off.  “Never mind.  Figured it out.”

“Lance!” Pidge yelled.  “The fuck did you touch?!”

“Uhhh… nothing?”

Pidge turned to Hunk.  “I’m going to kill your friend.  Hope that’s cool with you.”

“No arguments.”

That was when Black’s wings uncurled from her back, flaring to life.  She rose from the hangar floor, inch by inch, and Pidge swore with language obscurely foul enough even Lance had to think about for a moment before remembering what it meant.

Hunk peered down at the floor a good fifty feet below, growing further and further away as he tried to hold on to Pidge and the open panel of the Black Lion simultaneously.

“Lance?  Buddy?  Please set us back down.  I don’t feel good.”  He swallowed nervously.

Lance spluttered.  “Um?  I- I can try?  I don’t know what I…  Black?  Can we go back down now, please?  I didn’t mean it.  I just wanted to know what the button did,” he said.  Something in the air hummed back, unintelligible, and he felt Black slowly sink to touch back down.

Hunk slid down off the Lion and laid down on the cool hangar floor.

“Okay.  So.  Lance.  I think we’ve got this covered for the time being.  If you want to… like… go be not here for a little while, I would take it as a personal kindness,” Hunk said, mumbling it into the floor.

Shamefaced, Lance slid down out of Black’s mouth and made for the exit with no complaint, setting down the turned-off soldering iron as he went.  He didn’t really look at either one of them.

Hunk and Pidge exchanged glances.  On one hand, Lance had much thinner skin than usual, but on the other… he did almost just get them killed a little bit.

He probably knew that better than anyone, and that was the worst part by far.

* * *

Lance ended up heading towards the training room.  He thought he could remember Keith saying he wanted to get in the extra combat practice with multiples of the training bots – combat with multiple enemies was by far the more common type of altercation, considering they were probably outnumbered a few million soldiers to one.  Shiro had argued that no paladin should do anything more strenuous than one-on-one without backup, so he’d gone along for the ride.

That was probably only part of it.  Lance suspected that Shiro hated fighting alone, doing combat training by himself.  It would be too much like the gladiatorial ring.  Too soon.  Too fresh.  Even if Shiro couldn’t remember the specifics, it still had to hurt.  Fighting alongside others probably grounded him and kept him in the here and now.  Proof he wasn’t alone, and would never have to be again.  If Shiro wanted to get in any training, it would have to be with him acting as a ‘chaperone’ to one or more of the other paladins.  Someone to bap him on the head and bring him back to himself if anything went amiss.

Sure enough, there they were, grunting as they danced around four bots.  Lance blinked.  Keith didn’t have his bayard out, and Shiro’s arm wasn’t activated.  The bots all had blasters.

He knocked softly at the doorway, and Shiro’s eyes snapped over to him a split second before, “Simulation pause!”

The bots stopped mid-motion, and Keith turned to see what the issue was.  His eyes lit on Lance, and he gave the taller boy an appraising look.

“Hey.  What’s up?  I thought you were helping out the Nerd Squad with putting cloaking on all our Lions.”

Lance made an odd face, rotating his jaw a little.  “Uhh… Turns out they’ve got that one under control so far.  I’m just floating, I guess.  Need an extra hand in the fray, or-?”

Coran’s voice floated out over the speakers.  Of course.  It made sense they’d need someone to coordinate the more complicated simulations.  “Lance, you really shouldn’t be engaging in combat this soon out of the healing pod.  Your newer cells need time to integrate properly.  I don’t think it’ll _hurt_ you exactly, but it’ll feel odder than the fur of a paravis pushed backwards.  Might end up making it harder for you to get back to baseline, too.”

Shiro frowned.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a good idea, either.”

“Oh, come on!  It’s not like it matters if I get smacked around a little.”

“It matters,” Shiro said.

Lance was at a loss for words before Keith stepped in, the weird little biker angel.  “He doesn’t have to be in the middle of combat.  Lance, your bayard is a lightweight blaster, so why don’t you sit down off to the sides somewhere, stay out of the main fighting, and snipe them off?”

“…It would be extremely difficult to aim accurately while trying to avoid us as we’re fighting the bots in close-quarters combat,” Shiro said, over-exaggerating.  They were trying to tempt him into doing it their way by framing it as a challenge.

Sneaky little shmucks.

They knew him far too well.

Lance smirked.  “Betcha I can shoot down more bots than Keith can,” he said.

“I don’t even have a blaster!”

“Excuses, excuses.  Sounds like quitter talk to me, _dûsté män_ , but whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.”

“…Bring it, bitch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want an arby's buttermilk chicken bacon and swiss sandwich so bad i honestly looked up directions and considered driving out onto the boulevard even though it's nearly one in the morning. imagine being in space without the option of making a midnight junk food run.


	17. Debris

Keith hadn’t gotten to do anything fun (i.e. – shooting a whole bunch of Galran troops in the face) during Lance’s rescue mission.  He’d understood the importance of being the lookout and everything… but he was a simple guy with simple wants, and those wants happened to include senseless violence.  So naturally, upon returning to the Castle and healing up Lance, he’d announced that he was going to the training rooms to duke it out with the droids.

Shiro had wanted to come along as chaperone.  Eh, fair enough.  Keith would never admit it, but he really liked the idea of having someone at his back, particularly someone as reliable in a pinch as Shiro.  It would solidify their teamwork even more, and more than that, it was just a chance to spend time with one of his closest friends, on Earth or off it.

Adding Lance to the mix was a little bit of a surprise.

Not unwelcome, but a surprise nonetheless.

Lance wasn’t the team-est of players.  It wasn’t that he didn’t get along with others, it was just that he had a tendency to get distracted, or overcorrect certain issues while ignoring others.  He’d try to defend one person and leave himself wide open to attack in the same instant.  Lance wasn’t used to fighting with a team in mind, and that made it dangerous.  He was pretty good with coming up with plans for attack, but that was assuming the enemy gave him the opportunity to plan: a rarity in and of itself, although with Pidge along to hack security feeds, good recon intel got a lot easier to obtain.  It vaguely occurred to Keith that the rescue mission would have gone a lot smoother if anyone other than Lance had been captured.  As smart as they all were, the rest of them just didn’t have that natural knack for coming up with completely unexpected bullshit that was somehow consistently successful.

But Lance hadn’t been quite the same when he got back.  Wasn't as outspoken, wasn’t as handsy as he used to be (Keith refused to admit that he missed Lance slinging his arm around Keith’s shoulder randomly).  He had also gone weirdly pale when the decision to return to Earth had been made.  Why wouldn’t he be excited to go home?  He wasn't like Keith – he’d mentioned having parents and younger siblings (twins if he remembered correctly), and actually _liking_ all of them.  Keith didn’t miss much from home.  He missed his bike, sure, and his favorite pairs of socks, and decent food, but that was about it.  And rain.  Thunderstorms.  But then, he’d lived out in the desert for a while, so it wasn’t like he’d had those things in abundance even living back on Earth.  If even Keith could find something to miss about their spinning mud ball of a home, surely Lance could, too.  And yet, Lance continued going pale and sweating a little whenever they brought up the return trip home.  Something was sketchy there and he was determined to find out what.  All in due time, though.

Training sessions were as good a bonding moment as any.  Provided Lance didn’t manage to bust a cap in Keith’s spinal column by accident or something.  Lance parked his ass over in the corner of the room, tapping a thigh and whipping out the blaster that materialized.  He quirked an eyebrow and delivered a smug grin.

“Any time you’re ready to fire her up, princess,” he said.

Keith pulled the most disgusted face he was capable of making, which only made Lance smile wider.

“Begin Training Level Four:  ten participants,” Shiro said.  They’d tried getting the simulation to send more bots for just one or two people, but none of them could read the settings panel, which made it a bitch to change anything.  The next best alternative was to lie about the number of participants.  It wasn’t like the simulator would call them on it.

“Confirm: Training Level Four, ten participants,” said a cool sexless voice.

“Confirmed.”

“Beginning Level in ten… nine… eight… seven…”

Keith didn’t have time to worry about whatever Lance would be doing anymore.  He could handle himself.  Plus, he was outside the participant ring, so the droids wouldn’t go for him, anyway.  He could pick them off, one by one, without having to worry about being able to take a hit.  Keith had his own ass to worry about.

He activated his own bayard again, hearing the nigh-imperceptible hum as the blade extended from his wrist.  He widened his stance.  Narrowed his focus.  Just breathed, and waited.  He felt Shiro at his back do the same, the mechanical arm powering up and glowing magenta.

Huh.  Come to think of it, that seemed like the sort of thing that would be trigger-city for Lance, what with being stuck in a place rife with all that magenta lighting.  It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, though.  Keith mentally shrugged.  Human brains never seemed to make sense the same way twice, so who was he to claim that something was to be expected or not?

“Two… One… Zero.”

Ten droids dropped, blaster-equipped again like last time (the one setting they’d figured out how to mess with was the weapon equipment, although the only options they knew of were blaster, sword, and staff).

Keith didn’t even have time to raise his arm fully before Lance put three holes in the face of the droid closest to him.  Keith actually stumbled for a second, concentration broken, as he glanced backward with his mouth slightly agape.

“Focus!” Shiro called, and Keith tried to get back in the game a little.

“I was _trying_ , right before he-!”

“-Totally got the one-up on you?”

“Ugh!” Keith growled, and began trading blows with one of the bots.  His bayard could deflect blaster shots easily enough, but getting in close enough to do serious damage was always difficult.  He ducked around to the outside of the droid’s wrist as the arm bearing the blaster extended, effectively putting himself out of target range, and dashed up.  The droid managed to jump back just in time to avoid getting sliced clean through under the armpit, but still managed to get a nasty gash for its efforts.  Not enough to render it inoperable, though.  The droid drew its arm back, making to pistol-whip the shit out of Keith before he could recover his balance from the lunge.  Keith managed to bring his arm up just in time, slicing off the droid’s hand entirely.  From there, it was simple enough to-

Keith got a droid foot slammed into his back as he went in for the killing blow, knocking him on his ass.

Oh, right.  He’d forgotten that there were ten of the faceless little bastards.  Well, nine after the one Lance whacked in the first couple milliseconds.

“Keith, you good?” Shiro asked between pants, clearly dealing with his own combatants.  Three were circled around him, trying to get in a shot that couldn’t be blocked.  One’s arm had been melted clean through, and another had a deep dent in its chest cavity that must’ve come from Shiro’s bare hands.

On the floor were the remains of the other four droids plus the very first one to ‘die’ – all with three shots clustered neatly in their faces.

“Son of a bitch,” Keith muttered.

“Hiiiiiii,” Lance said with a giggle from the corner.

“I hate you.”

“Admit it: you’d miss the misery if I were gone.”

“Shut it, Halestorm.”  With that, Keith went back to trying to stab stuff with more fervor than ever, face twisted into a scowl that some of his foster mothers had assured him could end up permanent.  The handless droid went down first with no issue.  He turned to take out the fucker who’d kicked him to find that Lance had already taken care of it.  “ _Ughhh_!” he growled.  “Fuck it; Shiro, I’m taking one of yours!”

“Be my guest,” Shiro panted, ducking around two simultaneous blaster shots.  His foot shot out, knocking one back.  Keith took full advantage and hooked a foot around the droid’s ankle, toppling it.  He drove his bayard through its chest on the way down.

With an opening created, Shiro crushed the exposed wires of one droid’s throat and melted the rest of the way through the other’s chest, ending its functions.  Both dropped to the ground, lifeless as the other eight droids.

Shiro and Keith dropped to the ground to sit down properly and breathe for a while, sweat soaking through their shirts.  Gross.

“Y’know, I think that went well,” Lance said conversationally.

“Gonna kill you,” Keith said.

“After you went through all that effort to keep me alive, too.”

“Ironic, innit?”

“Guys,” Shiro said between pants, “Can’t we all just be happy things went well for once?”

“No,” said Keith.  “I just wanted to stab some bots!  I ask so little in life!  Just let me stab things!  And fuckin’ _Simo Häyhä_ over here’s gotta take out more than half of them?!  How’s that fair?”

Lance gasped and brought a hand to his mouth, fake teary-eyed.  “Keith, that is the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.  I’m serious, I’m touched.  I had no idea you felt that way about me,” he said, voice a-flutter.

“Oh my God, shut up,” Keith said.

“No fighting,” Shiro said.

“All fighting.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You stop that.  Both of you.  Keith, stop trying to kill Lance, and Lance, stop taunting Keith.”

“Nope, shan’t,” Lance said.

Keith surged up, and Coran’s voice cut in over the speaker.  “If I might suggest a training exercise a little less… combative?  Just for the time being?”

Shiro jumped on it.  “Yes!  Great idea!”

“You could even say it’s a _stellar_ idea,” Lance stage-whispered.  “Get it?  ‘Cause we’re in space.  It’s a pun.  Stellar.”

“He’s immortal, so I can strangle him all I want and we can still form Voltron,” Keith said.  Shiro hated to admit that it was starting to sound like a good idea.

Although, with Lance’s laughter chiming through the air, it was starting to feel like things were finally getting back to normal, and that was hardly a bad thing.

* * *

Lance had honestly been having fun for what felt like the first time in forever.  Messing with Keith shouldn’t have been half so fun as it was.  Maybe Keith was overreacting on purpose to make Lance feel better?  Or maybe he really was just that riled up from how tense it had been for the last… what, a week or so?  Nobody pushed his buttons quite like Lance could, and that made it all the sweeter when he finally blew up over something largely insignificant.

Not that making Keith mad was enjoyable all by itself.  Watching his face screw up like he’d taken shots of pure citric acid was the best part.  He just had the best face.  The little wrinkles of rage across his nose.  The high-pitched aborted scream in the back of his throat when on the verge of an explosion.  The little strangling motions he’d make with his fingers just to have something to do with his hands.  The way he rocked forward on his feet to try and make himself look a little taller, but still wasn’t quite enough to be the same height as Lance.  The absolute greatest.

And, if something genuinely made Keith uncomfortable or hurt him in any way, Lance would put a stop to it before it got that far ever again.  The unspoken agreement that went both ways.

Besides, a little arguing was healthy.  Men only called each other ‘brother’ when they called each other a lot of other shit first.

So he’d been totally fine doing a ‘team-building exercise’ or whatever even with Keith actively trying to fake-murder him.  That trust was still there, threats notwithstanding, and that was all that mattered.

Or so he thought.

First up on the menu was the invisible maze.  Lance was in the middle, and Shiro was supposed to be guiding him (they collectively figured that Keith ought not get the opportunity for revenge quite so quickly).

Something seized in Lance’s chest.  Why the hell had he agreed to this?  Why hadn’t he seen this coming?  He clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides sporadically, eyes darting around and hoping to see something – anything – that might help him get his bearings.

“Take two steps to your immediate left,” Shiro’s voice rang out.

Lance’s left leg twitched in the right direction.  “I- yeah.  Okay, just… Just gimme a sec,” he said.  Couldn’t let them know how hard this was freaking him out.  They’d start treating him like he was _mentally fragile_ all over again, and he’d finally managed to feel like he was back to his old self.  Was it too much to hope for that it could have lasted?

He scooted over to his left without changing the angle of his body, stiff and moving in such tiny increments that Shiro would be able to warn him well in advance of any collisions.

“Okay, you’re good.  Now turn 180 degrees and take three steps that way.”

Lance tried to calm his breathing.  It was going to be okay.  The walls wouldn’t shock him.  Shiro was guiding him.  Wouldn’t let Lance get electrocuted.

Not again.

No more painful shocks running through him, tearing him apart piece by piece until he couldn’t tell which screams were fresh ones and which were echoes off the round ceiling-

NO.

His body locked.  Just had to turn around to face his own six, and walk three steps.  Three little steps.  That was it.  All he had to do was trust Shiro and do what he was told.

_-you’d do well to obey or we’ll have to make the lesson stick this time-_

**Lance** , a familiar voice said, echoing in his mind with its urgency.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m okay.  I can handle this,” he whispered as he turned around as instructed.

 **If I can sense your distress from the hangars, I don’t think you’re doing as well as you’d like to be** , Abi said, ever practical.

“Yeah?  And what am I supposed to do about that?  Just tell them I have a pathological fear of electricity now?  Oh yeah, _that’s_ gonna go over well.”

**Put that sarcasm away; you don’t know where it’s been.**

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” he muttered.  Wait, was he facing the right direction?  There weren’t really any marks on the walls (the visible ones) to help him figure out which direction he’d been facing initially.

**I mean to say that showing weakness in front of them is not as bad as you make it out to be.  They won’t judge you.  They didn’t judge you before, did they?  And on whose advice did you finally act?  Who was finally proven right about the whole affair?**

“Hunk,” Lance said.

**I… Well, yes, that’s valid.  But I said it first.  You just ignored me.  Like you’re doing now, brushing off my infinite wisdom.**

Fuck, he really didn’t know where he was supposed to be stepping, and Shiro seemed okay with staying quiet.  Maybe he thought he just needed to let Lance take his time baby-stepping it like he’d done the first time?  “I just have to concentrate on right here and now, and they don’t need to know until I want them to.  I’d like to tell people stuff about me on my own terms.  Gives me a chance to control the conversation a little bit,” he said.

**I understand where you’re coming from, but they _will_ end up finding out about your innumerable anxieties sooner rather than later, particularly if you keep running headfirst into them like this.**

“Yeah, well, let’s burn that bridge when we get to it,” he said.  She gave a little psychic _harrumph_ before he felt her withdraw, leaving him as alone in his own mind as he could ever be.

The speakers crackled.  “Lance?  Are you o-?”

“I’m fine!” he shouted back, too quickly.  Damn, there was no way they’d miss that.  Oh, well.  No point in worrying about it now.  Just try to bull forward.

He took a step forward.  Just two more to go.  He could do this.  Just do what Shiro said to.

Lance’s angle of progression must’ve been slightly off, because the second step brought his arm into contact with the wall, and electricity coursed across his body.  He screamed and jerked violently away, which only sent him crashing into the opposite wall, beginning it all over again.  Lance whimpered and crumpled into a ball on the floor, trying to breathe around the sobs that wanted to come out.  There was no way he could keep going.

Fuck, they knew now.

Abi was right, as usual.

“Lance!  Lance, I’m shutting off the maze now; we’re coming down to get you out of there, okay?!” Shiro’s voice rang out, the worry thick enough to choke on.

God knew where he found the strength, but it was definitely his own voice that yelled, “No!”

Shiro was silent for a bit.  “…Are you sure?”

“I… Just… Let me try.  I don’t know how far I’m going to get, but… I’m not a quitter,” he said.

 **There’s no shame in quitting if you mean to come back later and try again someday,** Abi said from afar.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he mumbled.

**No one wants you to hurt yourself if you don’t have to.**

Lance ignored her.  He wasn’t going to get hurt.  It didn’t hurt him.  Not like last time, when the voltage had been high enough to cause horrifying muscle spasms all over, lasting minutes after the fact.  Not high enough a voltage to burn through clothing and skin, leaving the smell of lightly charred flesh hanging in the air.  A quick little zap.  He’d survive no matter what.  Of course he could take this.  It wasn’t actually going to hurt him, not really.  They were all blowing this whole thing out of proportion.  If he didn’t crush away his own anxieties now, he never would.

And then he noticed.

“Hey, wait a…”

Frost.  Frost had crept up all around where Lance had been sitting on the ground, up the still-invisible walls.  Just… random frost sticking straight up into the air.  He could see where the walls were.  Lance’s eyes widened.

Huh.

Well, that kinda defeated the purpose of it being a trust-building exercise, then.

“Yeah, don’t worry, I got it,” Lance called up, voice a lot stronger than it had been.  He reached inward for that ball of cold that always seemed to reside just below his stomach (probably the liver area – the liver was huge) and stretched out his hands in front of him a little.  Just the areas that he knew were safe.  When frost formed on the walls around him, all he had to do was avoid the obvious marker.  He almost laughed.  He was going to be fine.  Eyesight was one of the few senses he had that was totally intact – maybe he relied on it too much, but at least he wouldn’t be a nervous wreck in the middle of the floor waiting to be rescued again.  He wasn’t sure he could stomach that.

Keith and Shiro were already waiting at the edge of the room by the time Lance figured out how to get out of the maze.  Both still looked pretty shaken by the whole thing, but not as bad as they could have been.

“See?  Told you I was fine.  I just need a little… uh… adjustment period, and then I’ll be fine.  Don’t worry about it,” Lance said.

Their faces showed neither one of them was buying it.

Coran showed, trotting down the steps from the control room.  “That trick that you did… with the frost…”

“Huh?  Oh, yeah, I can do that pretty easy,” Lance said, waving a hand.  A couple snowflakes formed around his fingers.

“No, I mean it showed up on something with cloaking applied.  The same cloaking technology that is currently being applied to the Castle and all of the Voltron Lions,” Coran said.

The lightbulb went on.

“Shit,” Shiro muttered.

“My God, he’s right,” Keith said.

“We’ve got to tell Pidge before she finishes up,” Lance said.

All four men nodded, and made for the hangars.

* * *

“Hey, Pidge!” Lance yelled as soon as they’d made it.

Much clanging and crashing.  A tiny voice under the din yelled, “Yeah?  What?”

“We need repulsion factors!  Probably electromagnetic repulsion would work!”

Pidge appeared out from under a massive pile of scavenged junk that she’d been using for the few parts compatible with the Lions’ interface.  “Why would we need…?  Oh.  _Oh_ ,” she said.

“Yeah, ‘oh’.  With how much crap is floating in Earth’s atmosphere, plus the sheer amount of space dust, debris, and all that… cloaking won’t do much of anything if they can still see all of the junk that accumulates around us and on the surface of the Lions.”

“So can we keep that from being a thing?”

Pidge scratched her chin.

“Eh, sure.  Why not?  Oh, and Keith – while I’m doing this, you better get to installing your own cloaking tech.  I wrote you a guide, since you’re being a big whiny baby and not trusting me to do it,” she said, chucking what looked like a tiny booklet at Keith’s head.  He grumbled, but accepted it, flipping through a little.

Keith glanced up at Red’s open mouth, ready for her pilot, and smiled.

“Eager, are we?”  Some faint impression in the back of his mind told him Red was a little jealous that everyone else had gotten fancy things and she had been left out.  He jumped up into her mouth and made his way to the cockpit.  According to the manual Pidge wrote, he needed to divert power from the external thermals before screwing around with anything, and that could only be done from the control panel in the dashboard.

“All right girl, let’s trick you out,” he said, searching for the switch.  He could almost hear her purring.

Keith flipped ahead a little, trying to figure out the logic for the whole process, and promptly gave himself a paper cut.  “Typical,” he muttered as little beads of blood formed.  Oh well.  Wasn’t that big a deal.  He flipped the switch and called it a day, the dash sinking back down to its normal smooth state, only a tiny smear of blood marring the perfect surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's late but it's almost twice as long as usual so


	18. Curly Fries

Keith’s eyes blinked open slowly.  Everything was a hazy white, blended and merged as if he were underwater.  Sound flashed in and out, garbled, like a television set lacking a steady signal.  His body felt too heavy, too cold.  A slight stinging pain on his face, an ache all over almost every part of him.  It was all so dim, drifting in and out of his realm of consciousness, that he realized in the back of his mind that it had to be a dream.  He was asleep, resting up before they headed home to Earth.  Just a dream.  Nothing more.

And then something – or rather, someone – disrupted the view of pure white.  She was in stark relief compared to everything else, a decrepit and horrific-looking creature of white eyes and greasy hair dripping over her face.  A hood might have covered more of her if she hadn’t been leaning directly over Keith, grinning at him in a way that froze his blood solid.

“We’ll find your secrets,” she whispered to him, raising a hand to touch his face.  He flinched back from the touch, trying to shrink in on himself to no avail.  Something was holding him in place, unable to escape.  “You must not hide such lovely things from me.  I will find them anyway.  You and I will make beautiful things happen for the glory of the Empire.”

Keith shook, a blind panic that didn’t feel quite _his_ blooming in his gut.  He glanced down, anywhere but her face.  Far down below, almost out of sight… brown toes.  Blue jeans.

This wasn’t Keith’s body.

This wasn’t Keith’s dream.

All the same, a pain like a pickaxe drove through his skull, shattering his mind with a soul-wrenching scream.

Keith woke up soundlessly, eyes locked on his ceiling as he sucked enough air into his lungs for his brain to determine what the fuck that had been all about.  His body felt oddly warm, and he was certainly sweating like a racehorse.  Keith kicked off the covers.  He glanced down at his legs.  Pale.  His regular body.  Had he…?  Had he really seen Lance’s body there?

It was too damn early to think about this kind of thing.  The clock said it was still around five in the morning on the Castle’s timescale.  He was going to need a few more hours of sleep before even considering that maybe there were some more weird-ass powers Lance had picked up from his bond with the Blue Lion, like maybe projecting his creepy nightmares to everyone else on the team.  Keith’s gut twisted.  If Shiro saw… that wasn’t going to be good.  The mummy of a person who had been hurting Keith (Lance?) in the dream had to be one of the Druids, same as the ones who cut off Shiro’s arm.  Seeing one of them again had to bring up some painful memories for everyone involved.

Of course, maybe it wasn’t Lance’s dream at all.  Maybe Keith’s brain had come up with the whole thing.  Maybe he was just feeling some sort of sympathy for his teammate and this was just how it manifested – in the form of nightmares where he was stuck in Lance’s body, dealing with…

Huh.  Lance never really had gone in depth about what had happened while he was in captivity.  Every time someone brought it up, he dodged the questions, or described it so loosely that it could have meant any one of a thousand things.  Keith didn’t exactly _want_ to have a heart-to-heart; he wasn’t sensitive enough for shit like that.  But couldn’t Lance at least have opened up to Hunk or Shiro or whoever?  He’d already spilled half his guts to Shiro, it seemed.  Come to think of it, he might be embarrassed he told Shiro as much as he had, and that was why he was clamming up now.

Keith’s stomach grumbled.  Well, that made his decision for him – guess he was getting up at this ungodly hour after all.  What he wouldn’t give for an enormous plateful of bacon.  Nothing but bacon.  Okay, maybe a Belgian waffle or five.  Boysenberry syrup.  Maple sausages.  One of Shiro’s weird specialty teas that were actually really fucking tasty.  His mouth was watering just thinking about _real food_.  As soon as they touched down on Earth, Keith was hauling ass to the nearest grocery store and robbing them blind.  Unless Allura had a vault full of gold hidden in the Castle somewhere, in which case they might be able to afford a shopping trip without committing grand theft.

He swung his legs out of bed, scowling at the sudden rush of cold air.  As he stood, gravity made an additional issue apparent.  Off to the bathrooms it was, then.

By the time Keith stumbled blearily into the kitchen, hoping for a little hot water and lemon action, it became clear he hadn’t imagined the dream sharing.  Lance was up, too.

Lance yawned wide.  “Okay, so… I know why _I’m_ up, but why are you?”

“Not by choice, I’ll tell you that much,” Keith said.  Lance made a weird circular hand motion like he was giving Keith a thumbs-up and then thunking that hand into his other palm.  Sign language for something, probably.  Stamp of approval?  Whatever.  “Anyway, did you have a nightmare?”

Lance stiffened and his jaw snapped tight.  “…What makes you say that?”

“’Cause I think your witchy powers might extend to pushing your dreams on other people.  I had this weird dream where I was in your body in a white dome-looking room with a Druid being real creepy and in my – your? – personal space.”

A full-body shudder ran through Lance, and his arms pulled in close to his body like a hedgehog preparing to curl up.  “…I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“So that really _was_ your dream, then.”

Lance nodded, silent.

Keith had no idea what to say at this point.  Was there a right thing to say?  Try to convince Lance to talk about it?  Nah.  Leave that for a person with more tact.  Somebody Lance disliked a little less, maybe.  Lance was looking an awful lot like he wanted to change the subject very, very badly, so… maybe that was the right card to play.

“Anyway, I’ve been craving bacon like mad and it’s fucking me up.”

Lance blinked.  Eyes widened.  Leaned forward.  “Dude.  Dude, _that is my whole life_ ,” he stage-whispered, mouth curving into a little smile.  There was gratitude in his eyes, under it all.

“I woke up and was like, ugh, no, I’ll go back to sleep, and then my stomach was like, oh no you don’t,” Keith said.

“We’ve all been there, buddy.  Some more than others who shan’t be named.  Cough cough _Hunk_ cough.”

“We don’t have any money, but dear sweet baby Jesus we need to make a grocery run.  Stock up on bulk-buy frozen pizzas, Hot Pockets, the whole nine yards.  Enough to keep us going for a while.”

A little of the old trepidation was back on Lance’s face, and for the life of him, Keith couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong.  They’d only just started to have an amicable conversation for the first time in... what, ever?  He really didn’t want to mess that up, except clearly he’d already done it.

“Ehe… yeah.  Better hope my mom’s BJs membership hasn’t expired yet,” Lance said with a fake laugh.

Ugh.  Keith had never been the type for beating around the bush.  “What’s so bad about going home that you panic every time someone mentions it?”

Lance had a look on his face like he’d just been smacked upside the teeth with a metal baseball bat a good dozen times. “I… what?”

“You keep looking freaked whenever we talk about going home.  Why?”

Lance’s knee started bouncing.  His eyes glued themselves to the mug of something-or-other that had been sitting on the table, ignored all this time.  “I... I just don’t know what’s going to be waiting for us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Galra,” Lance said shortly.  “Couple of times the Druid’s interrogations knocked me out.  I don’t know what she saw in my head while I was out.”

Keith swallowed, understanding.  They could know about Earth, hold it hostage.  Know about Pidge’s family.  About everyone’s families.  Lance knew everything about his own family, and Hunk’s, and Pidge’s, and Keith’s lack of family, which was a good deal more than could be said for any other paladin.  If the Galra had had the insight to search for viable hostages in the depths of Lance’s mind, going home might be putting them all in even more danger.  They might be there already, waiting for the wayward paladins to make their way back.

He just breathed, in and out.  Tried not to sound scared.  “…That’s rough, buddy.”

Lance snorted.  “Can’t believe you just said that.”

“What, you want a hug?  Come here, I’m sweaty and gross.  Let’s hug it out.”

“Ew!  Fuck off, man, you’re gonna clog my pores,” Lance said, giggling.  The moment of fear was broken somehow.

They settled.  “If the Galra are there, we’ll destroy them like we have every other time we’ve found them sniffing around where they shouldn’t.  Earth is protected.  Besides, they had Shiro for over a year.  I think they had a good idea of where our species came from long before they got ahold of you.  Same goes for the Holts.  They were with Shiro and obviously good friends of his, remember?  If anything happens to them or to Earth, it’s not your fault,” Keith said.  That ought to settle the matter.

Lance sank back in his chair, most of the tension draining.  “…I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.  You’re absolutely right.  They already would have known.  I’m an idiot.”

Keith paused.  “I want to bottle that moment just so I can open it up on my bad days and take little sips of it when I need it.”

“Oh, shut up.  If I’m dumb and still smarter than you, what does that say about you?”

Keith just kicked him under the table.  Lance kicked back.  He had better stop before they started trying to wet willy each other.

“So, you’re excited to see your folks again?” Keith asked.

“Well… yeah!  Of course I am.  It’s everybody _else_ who I don’t think’s gonna be so happy to see me,” Lance said with a snort.

“Iverson?”

Lance rolled his eyes.  “He’s going to be livid, but that’s not totally who I meant.  I do have to pick up my shit from the dorm, though, so I might end up having to run into him at some point.”

“So who’d be pissed to see you?”

“The mass media.”

Keith blinked.  Not what he expected.  “…I don’t get it.”

“Come on, man, think it through.  Bunch of good kids more or less kidnapped off a top-secret military training base by a Middle Eastern guy who also hijacked a giant flying space weapon.  Think about how that sounds for a minute.”

“But that’s not how it was at all!  You didn’t kidnap anyone; that’s bullshit,” Keith said.

“You think that matters?  All that matters is what sells papers or online subscriptions.  Truth is secondary.  If they can cry terrorism, they will, and no matter how much they may one day try to go back and clarify or correct what they said, that first news report is going to be the only one anyone remembers.  The Garrison was never subtle about exactly how many ‘random’ security checks they did on me.”

“They seriously pulled that on you?”

Lance’s face was a mask of unimpressed calm.  “You betcha.  Know how many times Homeland Security interviewed Pidge before she got in?  Never.  For me?  Five interviews.”

Keith sucked in a breath.  “What the fuck.”

“Exactly.”

“They can’t do that!”

“Yes, they can.  It’s actually better than it used to be, too.  Remember when I said my folks lived near an active airfield?”  Keith nodded.  “Well, they had to go through about twelve interviews before the DOD and Homeland Security said it was okay for them to move in.  Guess they thought we might be an Iranian sleeper cell or something, never mind that I was four, Mom was pregnant, and Dad was Cuban.”

Keith groaned.  A headache was blooming and his body still felt overheated – even moreso with the ball of rage that was growing in the pit of his stomach.  “If you want me to set any of them on fire, just know that I have my ways.”

Lance laughed.  “I appreciate it, man.  Thanks, but, um… don’t set anybody on fire unless you can secure a decent alibi.”

“Noted.”

Their stomach growled in unison.

“Arby’s chicken bacon swiss sandwich,” Lance whispered.

“Don’t,” Keith groaned.

“Onion rings.”

“Ughhh…”

“Chocolate shakes with whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings on top.”

“Stop, I’m serious.”

“That really good Chinese takeout place right by the Garrison that always gets the broccoli the perfect amount of crisp, with flawlessly caramelized sauce, and God’s own pork fried rice.”

“I hate you so much.”

“I know.  I hate me, too.  So… how much money you got?”

“Ten bucks and some change.  My wallet was never exactly bursting.  You?”

“Fifty-three and change.  We were planning on going out for a night on the town when we got distracted by this whole Defenders-of-the-Universe thing.”

Keith grinned.  “Valid.  So does that mean you’re treating us to drive-through junk food when we get back?”

Lance groaned.  “At this rate, I’m going to have to, aren’t I?”

“You started it, so it’s only fair.”

Every time Lance laughed, it seemed like the uncomfortable heat of Keith mellowed into a pleasant warmth.  This… wasn’t so bad.  Somehow, they were finding thermal equilibrium between the two of them.

Hey, whatever worked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry mates; ever since my manager quit her job in a fit of temper, my workload has doubled, especially considering I'm in retail and holiday season is coming up.
> 
> But yeah, you don't know tension until you've been in a room full of Middle Eastern Americans right after a bombing.


	19. Reprobate

Keith swallowed around a lump in his throat, staring wide-eyed at the vast screen that comprised the walls of the bridge.  There was the Earth, shockingly small in the sky and yet one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.  Their stable orbit put them a little bit closer to Earth than the Moon, but much further away than the ISS.  Hunk had wanted to be a little closer, maybe open comms with the ISS (apparently he had a distant cousin in there or something), but Allura had pointed out that they’d be visible from the ground with the naked eye and could cause substantial panic down below.  Hunk had grudgingly conceded, but not before muttering, “They’ll just think it’s Laputa – we’d be fine.”

The Earth below was a stunning mix of shades of blue and green and brown, swirls of white clouds meandering their way around it like a blanket.  It would be summer by now in the northern hemisphere.  Clear skies in Beijing, a beautiful day to eat lunch outside.  The southwestern United States and the Garrison, fifteen hours behind, was settling down to sleep, angry summer storm clouds blocking the whole area from view.

“Rain,” Shiro whispered reverently.

“Rain,” Pidge agreed.

They’d all been looking at the same place, it seemed.

“Cloud and night cover.  I think we might be able to sneak in without anyone even noticing a giant flying castle fortress guarded by flying metal cats,” Keith said.

“A stroke of luck,” Allura said.  She smiled.  “I had never seen your home planet before.  It’s beautiful.”

“What’s that great big white thing at the bottom?” Coran asked.

“You mean Antarctica?” Pidge asked.  “It’s a continent covered by ice and snow that never melts because the sun doesn’t shine on it directly enough to heat it properly.  Almost no one lives there.”

The Alteans both looked aghast.  “It’s _always_ below freezing?!  What kind of ill-designed planet has parts of it that are completely uninhabitable?”

Pidge shrugged.  “I wouldn’t say it’s uninhabitable.  The beings that inhabit it just happen to be, like, bears and seals and shit.  And penguins, with their cute little flippers.”  She waddled a little with her arms ramrod straight to demonstrate.

“Fascinating,” Coran muttered, still looking a little bewildered.  “I wonder how they survive.”

Lance spoke up for the first time since Allura had called them up to the bridge.  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.  There are snails that live in deep-sea vents where heat from below the Earth’s mantle brings the water up to 1/13th the temperature of the surface of the _Sun_ , where nothing but sulfurous poison billows out 24/7, and those little suckers eat poison to survive, then take the heavy metals they eat and build armor out of ‘em.  They look like gross little tanks.  It’s amazing.”

“Scaly-footed gastropods!” Hunk crowed, delighted.  “Oh my God, I love those things.  They’re so freaky.”

 “Wait ‘til they hear about everything _else_ that’s at the bottom of our oceans,” Keith said, just to be an asshole.  The humans started chuckling darkly in unison.

Allura looked ready to have a heart attack and Coran looked like he was going to be violently ill.

Allura cleared her throat.  “Ah, well, erm… Let’s just… set on down then, shall we?  I don’t suppose any of you volunteer to take us down in your Lions?”

Coran lifted a hand.  “I request to stay on board the Castle to be ready in case of an emergency.”

“Er, yes, certainly.”

“Not a fan of iron snails, huh?” Lance said, jabbing an elbow into Coran’s ribcage.  “Eh, to each their own, buddy.”

Keith risked a look at Lance.  He did look a little better than he had yesterday, or the day before.  After determining that no Galra ships were near Earth, he’d collapsed into a chair like jello dropped from the mold, clear relief in every line of his body.  The others had been too busy staring at the screens and hadn’t seen it, but Keith had.  Hell, he’d been keeping an eye out for it.  Since then, most of the color had returned to Lance’s face, and it looked like he had more energy.  He still wasn’t as talkative as he used to be, but… maybe that was just going to become the new norm.  Shiro was different after his stay with the Druids.  It only made sense that Lance would be too, as much as it hurt to think about.

Shiro turned to look at Lance.  “I suggest we set down in the Blue Lion.  After all, we’re heading for her shrine, and the military should already be somewhat familiar with her.  Some footage from our… departure… had to have been recorded.  I think they’d be more at ease with a machine they recognize than some of the others, which might be misinterpreted as a showing of military strength.  They might not take it well.”

“Don’t flash our shiny new weapons, huh?  Yeah, whatever,” Keith said, sullen.

“Abi won’t mind.  She’s already had to deal with you losers packed into her cockpit before,” Lance said.  He paused.  Frowned.  “Y’know, come to think of it, how come I’ve never been in anyone else’s cockpit but Abi’s and Black’s that one time?  Everybody got to know what my Lion looked like on the inside, but I never got an invitation to tour _you_ guys’ Lions.  Rude.”

Keith rolled his eyes.  “Jeez, fine.  You can poke around Red all you like when we get back, provided she’s okay with it.”

“Well yeah, duh.  I’d never violate a lady’s privacy,” Lance said, a flirtatious grin and eyebrow already poised for action.

“You’ve dutch-ovened me at least three times during team movie night.  Quit trying to convince anyone you're a gentleman.” Pidge reminded him.  He spluttered (“That doesn’t count!  You’re not actually a girl!  Or a boy!  Or-!”) as she tapped her chin.  “Actually yeah.  Speaking of which, I’m going to try and nab some movies off Netflix while we’re down there.  I miss wifi.”

“Make sure to download _2016_.  Shiro still hasn’t seen it.”

“The apocalypse flick?”

“That’s the one.”

“I thought it was a documentary,” Shiro muttered.

“Same difference.”

“Paladins,” Allura said.

“Right, right.  Oh – I meant to ask.  Should we have on street clothes for this?  So if we get caught by the Garrison or the Air Force or whatever, they won’t be like, ‘shit aliens are invading and their flight suits are weirdly color-coded’?”

Allura squinted at him.  “Are you certain that would be their reaction?”

“This is America we’re talking about.  Of course their first thought is going to be an alien invasion.”

“And in a way, they wouldn’t be wrong,” Hunk said.  “You’re coming along too, right Princess?”

She looked down at her hands, fidgeting, a look of contained excitement on her face.  “I must confess, I am curious as to the planet that produced your species.  The Blue Paladin I knew surely left the Blue Lion there for a reason.  I’d like to discover what it might be.  Not to mention you would require at least one Altean with you to translate any text or runes found in the Blue Lion’s shrine.”

“Solid point.  So… do princesses have any street clothes?” Lance asked.

Allura hesitated.  “The grand majority of my clothing is here in the Castle with us, but… I’m afraid I don’t know Earth fashion culture very well, and-“

Hunk waved a hand.  “I got you, sister.  Show me what we have to work with.”

Allura glanced over at Pidge, a plea in her eyes.  Pidge flinched back.  “Don’t look at me.  I’m a fashion disaster.  Mom refused to allow me to dress myself because she said I always managed to make it look like I crawled out of a dumpster three nights ago and forgot to change clothes since.”

“Nineties aesthetic.”

“Exactly.”

Hunk steered a very irresolute princess out of the bridge, doubtless headed straight for whatever walk-in (or hell, even live-in) closet she possessed.  Keith would be lying if he said he had no interest in seeing what ‘street’ clothes might look like on Allura.  It seemed inherently unnatural for her to be wearing anything casual like jeans and a tee.  Long flowing dress robes or a battle suit:  there was no in-between.

The others were filing out as well, most likely to grab whatever they wanted to bring back to Earth with them, or make a list of shit they needed to pick up while dirt-side.  At last, Keith and Lance were the only ones left.

“So… feeling better about the whole thing?” Keith asked.

Lance’s mouth did a weird thing where it wiggled around all over his face.  “Knowing the Galra aren’t hiding behind bushes or in my mom’s ficus is… liberating, I guess.  Doesn’t mean we don’t have to face the human incarnations of ice hitting a tooth filling.”

“We might not even run into them.”

Lance snorted.  “Oh, we’re going to run into them.  They aren’t that far from the shrine.”

“It’s night and there’s a thunderstorm.  The odds of them seeing us coming are pretty slim unless they’ve got 24/7 radar going.”

Lance whirled around.  “And you don’t think that’s weird?”

Keith blinked.  “What do you mea…  Oh.  _Oh_.”

“Yeah.  How the fuck do you get thunderstorms – or any rain at all – in a desert?  Where’d the water come from?”

Keith frowned.  “Blue’s element is… water?  Ice?  Combo-pack?  How do we know that the shrine itself doesn’t have some kind of mystical voodoo powers that you activated when we went in there?  We left almost immediately afterward.  No way to know if there were lasting effects involved.”

Lance worked his jaw.  “Guess we won’t know ‘til we’re down there, sniffing around in person.”

“Yeah.”

And suddenly, without warning, Lance’s face lit up just a little.  “But hey.  You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Keith didn’t trust Lance’s deranged mind half as far as he could throw it, and immediately conjured up images of Allura getting naked while changing clothes.  “God, I hope not.”

Lance looked confused.  “Wait… what did you just think of?”

“I- nothing.”

“You just thought of something really weird, didn’t you?  Did it involve an platypus?”

“What?”

“It was an option.”

“Christ Almighty, just tell me what you were thinking.”

Lance grinned, back on subject.  “Do you think Abi would fit in a drive-through?”

* * *

“Okay, that’s two Chicken Bacon Swiss sandwiches, heavy on the honey mustard, one Smokehouse Turkey sandwich, a Fire-Roasted Philly, sub the aioli for barbeque, a Junior Bacon Cheddar Melt, a French Dip and Swiss, two large curly fries, two medium chocolate shakes, and four medium Jamocha shakes.  Is that everybody?” Lance asked, leaning back to look up at the five people crouching over the back of his pilot chair.

“Yeah, that’s everybody,” Hunk said.

“Okay, we’re good to go here!” Lance said into the speaker loudly.

 **If you leave greasy fingerprints on my dashboard, I will destroy you** _,_ Abi projected.

 _Please, I’m a professional,_ Lance responded silently.

“Okay sir, that’ll be $50.89 – the next window will be able to take you shortly.”

“’Kay, thanks!” Lance said.  Shit.  That was nearly all his pocket money.

“I’m excited to try this ‘French Dip and Swiss’.  You say it involves the names of two countries?  Did they ally to invent it?” Allura asked.

“I… honestly have no idea why it’s called a French dip.  What could possibly be French about a sandwich?  Seems like a question for Google.”

Pidge hummed.  “Have I mentioned being really happy to have wifi again?”

“Only about forty times.”

“Don’t ruin this for me, Keith.”

Lance concentrated, trying to maneuver the narrow channel of the drive-through.  External cameras showed a person inside the first window, manning the register.  He fiddled with some things, not paying attention.  Lance cleared his throat into the microphone.  Without looking up at first, the man inside shot out a hand, pulling aside the little sliding window, and at last glanced out into the night.  Looked puzzled for a moment.  Then looked, ever so slowly, up… up… up.  Gulped visibly.

“I owe you fifty-eight-nine, right?  Uhhh… I got a fifty and a one here.  Keep the change ‘cause it’s gonna be a bitch to get the rest back up the… well, you get the point.”  Lance slid the bills down a chute that lead to Abi’s mouth.  She opened her terrifying maw obligingly, flicking her head a little so the money flew in through the window past the cashier, still frozen in place, mouth gaping.  “Thanks, buddy.  You have a good one!”

Second window.

A tiny girl, barely five feet tall, probably standing on a box or something.  Took one look out the window, froze with huge eyes, then squinted and sucked a breath in like this was hardly the weirdest thing she’d been through in her life (but solidly in the running) and grabbed bags full of sandwiches and fries.  “Just… uh… in the mouth here, then?”

“Yeah, go for it.  Thanks.”

“And will you be needing a cup tray for the shakes?”

“No shit!  We’re in a giant robot cat, not a friggin’ octopus.  Oh, and throw in some extra napkins.  She’s testy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes that is exactly what it costs with tax i looked up the arby's menu because it's important, damn it
> 
> In other news, my country failed me. My state did the right thing but everyone else dropped the damn ball. Some of you seem to enjoy this bizarre story in which nothing of interest happens and it's 80% banter, and I figure you need a pick-me-up today. I'm going to try and get back up on this horse for NaNoWriMo, even if I've basically already failed.


	20. Home Again Home Again

Allura was having the actual time of her life.  Apparently a “French Dip” was a sizeable stack of thinly shaved meat between two slices of fluffy starch-and-protein modules the paladins called ‘bread’, which was then dipped in a mix of meat juices and spices called… what had they called it?  “Oh juu”?  Whatever it was, it was delightful.  Some part of her mourned that she would never be able to go back to the green goo aboard the castle without thinking longingly of Earth food.  She understood the paladins’ complaints more than ever.

She hadn’t been inside any of the Lions in what felt like forever.  Very rarely did paladins allow passengers, even royal ones.  She’d always figured it was a pride thing, or proof of the special bond between paladin and Lion that was sacrilege to intrude upon.  Lance felt no such compunctions and just let whoever cram into ‘Abi’, as he kept calling her.  As soon as she’d stepped aboard, Allura felt the magical hum of her own bond with the Lions, a soft song echoing in the dark.  She’d missed this.  This feeling of being completely, totally safe.  Protected.  The paladins and the Lions could have their bond, but some part of their hearts would always remain with Allura.  A tension she hadn’t even known she’d been carrying melted away.

To be honest, it probably helped that she wasn’t wearing very restricting clothing.  Hunk had insisted that ‘street clothes’ were loose-fitting and comfortable, with hardly described much of anything in Allura’s closet.  Royalty wasn’t supposed to look casual.  They were supposed to look regal, beautiful, intimidating.  Hunk had groaned in pure frustration after rooting through the first half of the closet and finding absolutely nothing to work with.  Then he’d struck some measure of gold: a turquoise tunic that nipped in a bit at the waist, flaring out into something vaguely resembling a dress, full sleeves billowing, secured by small silk wrappings at the wrist.  None of her leg coverings were quite appropriate for casual dress, so Hunk advised she just wear the bottoms of a flight suit and hope for the best.  It would have to do.  She had to admit, she looked pretty good.  A quick ponytail and she almost looked like a regular person, regal bearing and flawless posture aside.

They were all camped out on the floor of Abi’s cockpit, shoving food into their faces and arguing over the last curly fries, exchanging ideas over where to go in what order.

“I kinda want to get this whole cave-rune thing out of the way first.  If something happens and we need to leave earlier than expected, it’d be nice to have done the thing we came here to do in the first place,” Keith said.

“Yeah, I know, and that makes sense, but if my mom found out I came back home and didn’t call her first thing, she’d murder me.  Straight-up murder.  She’d murder me so bad, I’d die from it,” Hunk said.

“Same with mine,” Lance chimed in.  “You wanna pick a fight with Mama Azadeh McClain?  Be my guest.  I’ll say beautiful things in your eulogy.”

Pidge looked unusually sober.  “My mom’s the only one in my family still on Earth.  She probably doesn’t even know any of us are alive.”  Everyone flinched.  They hadn’t forgotten, exactly… they just hadn’t thought about the implications.  Never really wondered how bad it had to be for the ones left behind.

“What bullshit story do you think the Garrison fed our folks?” Lance wondered.

“They already told the world I’m dead,” Shiro said.  “I’m certain they’ll try to maintain that story.  Might be best if my face isn’t seen in public too much.”

“What a shame.  You have a very nice face.”

“I know, doesn’t he?  Look at that jawline.  Could filet a fish on that.”

Allura cleared her throat.  “Paladins.  Mothers’ ire notwithstanding, we do have a task set for us.  We ought to examine the chamber where the Blue Lion was housed.  We can take images of the runes if they are ancient past the point where they are easily decipherable, and then I can have the rest of our trip to puzzle out a translation while you enjoy being home.  Besides, you mentioned it being quite close to this… Garrison.  I’m curious to see what kind of facility managed to produce five exemplary paladins in as many years.”

Lance elbowed Keith.  “Hear that?  ‘Exemplary’, she called me.”

“Must’ve been a typo.”

“This is a verbal conversation!”

“Well, damn.  Got me there.”

Lance groaned and swiped the remains of Keith’s sandwich, cutting off Keith’s irritable squawking with a mumble around a mouthful of food that might’ve been, “Bitch, I paid for it.”

“…Yeah, okay.  Mysterious cave of wonders first,” Hunk said.  “Does anyone know where we are, exactly?  It’s not any place I recognize.”

Lance swallowed and shrugged.  “Coordinates put us in southeast Arizona.  We’re not too far from the Garrison.  Only, like, a couple hundred miles or something.”  He began slurping at the last of his shake as noisily as possible.

“Ugh.  How is your shake still cold?  Mine melted into gross shake soup half an hour ago,” Pidge said.

“Gimme,” Lance said, grabbing the shake.  He popped off the plastic top, took the spoon, and began stirring as fast as possible.  In the darkness, his eyes glowed faintly.  He blinked, and it was gone.  “Here.  You’re welcome,” he said, handing it back.

Pidge stared down at the refrozen shake, jaw a little slack.  “Ice powers.  I forgot.”

“Do mine too, buddy,” Hunk said.

“…Paladins.  That is a sacred power, not to be abused, granted by some of the strongest magic in the univer… Oh, I don’t know why I bother.  Do mine, too,” Allura said, offering hers.

* * *

New Mexico, as Allura learned, was unbearably hot, even with the rain and the wind beating down.  They had seen the dark, ominous clouds over this part of the world from the bridge of the castle, so Allura had been expecting something rather different than the desert that greeted her as she stepped out of the Blue Lion.

Rain in a desert.  How jarring.

Keith looked grim.  “This feels unnatural,” he muttered.  The others exchanged looks of agreement.

“You don’t think it’s magical blowback from whatever we kicked up when we left, do you?” Lance asked her.

Allura frowned.  “I can’t think of why that would be, though.  There shouldn’t have been any magical traps or failsafes in the resting place of the Blue Lion.  Her paladin would have been well aware of the possibility that another paladin would be chosen, and leave this place.  Why place precautions to punish those who did so?”

“Not to mention that that would mean that this place has been storming ever since we left,” Shiro said.  They all glanced at the ground beneath their feet.  It didn’t feel like a muddy slush of rock, dirt, sand, and rain.  Not possible.

“Well, we’re not getting any answers sitting around soaking our underwear,” Pidge groused, and started stalking off somewhere.  Five seconds and she looked more a drowned rat than a mighty paladin.

“Does she even know where we’re going?” Lance asked the air.

“No.  Last time we used Hunk’s weird not-Geiger-Counter thing to find Blue’s energy signature, but she’s not in the cave anymore, so…” Keith shrugged.  “I mean, I’ve got it marked on my phone’s GPS, but I haven’t charged my phone in… what, a year?  However long it’s been.”

“That would have been real helpful to-“ Lance paused mid-sentence, eyes glazing over a little.  “Oh, hey.  Abi says she knows how to find her way back.”

“Really?” Allura said.  There was a tiny ache in her chest, wondering just what a Lion’s voice would sound like in _her_ mind.

“Yeah.  Couple of clicks east-northeast for now.  Should probably catch up to Pidge.”

"Wait a..." Keith waved a hand.  "If Abi knows exactly where the opening to the cave is, why didn't she set us down right next to it or something?"

Lance sucked his teeth.  "Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't catch that.  She says this is revenge for getting grease prints all over her cockpit."

"Are you shitting me?  She's making us walk the whole way there?!"

"If I kept getting stuck with field-trip chaperone duty, I'd want a break too," Hunk said.  "Let's just get a move on.  The sooner we do, the sooner we find someplace dry to hunker down."

The trudge was an arduous one, even for someone as physically fit as Allura.  The heat, the uneven and shifting ground, the slickness the rain gave the sand… it was all a bit much.  The swampy mugginess just made it worse.  “How can you stand to live like this?” she gasped.  “Altea never had such climates.”

“Never had a little heat?” Shiro asked.

“Not to this degree, gracious no.”

“Huh.  No wonder you guys don’t bother with deodorant.  If the temperature’s never high enough for you to sweat all over the place…” Lance said.

“’Sweat’?”

“It’s what your pores release to carry off excess body heat and maintain your core temperature.”

Allura was aghast.  “You just… emit foul-smelling bodily fluids when it’s hot outside?”

“Y’know, when she puts it like that, it sounds pretty nasty.”

“Sweat _is_ pretty nasty.  We keep trying to stop it for a reason.  Antiperspirants every-frickin’-where.”

“Hey, Keith!  How come you look so chill?  It’s New Mexico in summer.  Seriously dude, at least breathe a little hard.”

Keith shrugged.  “I lived out here forever, remember?  I’m used to it.”  His face betrayed a tiny amount of discomfort, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.

“Further proof he is the Heat Miser,” Lance said.

“Eat me.”

“Come on, guys.  Only a little further.  How much longer do we-?” Shiro turned to Lance, but Keith cut him off before the words got out.

“Actually, I think we’re there.”

“Huh?  We are?” Lance glanced up at his Lion for confirmation.  “Ah.  So we are.”

Allura peered into the darkness, squinting as though that would cut through the rain and let her see her surroundings better.  Starlight and moonlight could only do so much to break through the immense cloud cover and light their path.

Keith pointed helpfully.  “See the little ridge there?  The opening to the cave is just past that.   I remember this place.”

“Good catch,” Shiro said.

“At last,” Hunk said.  “Dry land.”

“Considering the tunnels went down, how much do you want to bet the caves are flooded a little bit, though?” Lance said.  Hunk offered a world-class stink face.

The opening to the cave was well-hidden, nestled between crooks of rock that ensured no ignorant passerby could stumble upon it by pure accident.  You had to know what you were looking for, or it would seem to melt into the surrounding rock, just another amphibolite schist outcropping among thousands.

True to Lance’s offhand comment, the rocky ground inside the cave was soaked, even moreso after six people dripped all over it.  Thin marks adorned the walls, too dimly lit to see well.

“Are these…?” Allura asked, her voice quietly reverent as her fingers traced the swirling lines.

“Yeah.  Lance?”

He raised a hand, running it over the rocks.  Blue light filled the lines, spreading from his fingertips to cut into the darkness below, lighting a path.

Allura sucked in a breath.  It was beautiful.  So beautiful.  Ten thousand years, erosion crumbling the distinctive marks, and still she recognized the handwriting of the Blue Paladin _she_ had known, had grown up admiring and loving like family.  A soft and gentle man who loved his family, loved his duty to his people.  Told a good joke.  Would eat anything anyone put in front of him.  Had a terrible habit of forgetting to sleep in between days.  Wrote down his dreams on the rare occasion he had one, just in case it turned out to be important.  Kept wearing his shoes on the wrong feet.

By Altea, she missed them.

If any of the paladins noticed that some of the wetness on her face wasn’t rain, they said nothing of it.

“I shall… I shall make a record of these,” Allura said, shoving it down.  She could mourn later.  She raised a large-spread image scanner, what the humans had called a ‘camera’, and began panning slowly across the walls.  The faint glow of the lines was enough to give a good image.  Already, a substantial portion of the text was easily legible.  It looked like the Blue Paladin of old didn’t bother with archaic languages.  It was, however, in some kind of code.  Seemed pretty obvious in retrospect; it would have to be, in order to prevent any of Zarkon’s lot from reading it.  Zarkon’s armies knew enough to read Altean back in the day, so something would have to have been done to protect information from prying eyes.

“It’s in code,” she told them.  “I’m certain I can crack it.  He only knew so many codes, after all.”

Shiro put a hand on her shoulder and smiled.  “We’ll help in whatever way we can.”

The new batch wasn’t the worst of tradeoffs, all things considered.

Lance frowned at the floor.  “Something doesn’t feel right,” he muttered.

“Huh?  What do you mean?”

“From last time.  It doesn’t feel the same.  I think it’s the magic in here that was what was keeping it hidden.  It’s shifted somehow.”

Allura frowned, closed her eyes, and tried to concentrate on the flow of energies around her.  As usual, she felt Lance’s presence strongly, a product of his bond with the Blue Lion.  With a start, she realized there was a flicker of heat, just out of reach of her conscious thought.  Every time she tried to examine it directly, it slipped out of grasp, like soap in the bath.  She shook her head to clear it.  Must be imagining things.  Now that Lance mentioned it, the energy _was_ flowing strangely.  Normally it flowed inward, deeper into the tunnels, pulling from the natural environment to keep the Lion powered and in good repair.  A failure of that mechanism would mean the eventual loss of power, and all shielding would be dropped.  Anyone could waltz in and take the Blue Lion.

Allura gasped.  Oh.  _Oh_.

“I think I know why it is raining outside,” she said.

They all exchanged glances.

“The Blue Lion borrowed the life force of this land to stay hidden, protected.  Now that it no longer is housed here…”

Hunk’s jaw went slack.  “Wait… you mean… New Mexico isn’t a desert because that’s just what it is?  It’s a desert because Abi sucked the life out of it?!”

“I-I’m sure that’s not the whole of it.  I mean, the region was probably dry before… It just ended up even drier.”

“And now the rainfall’s gone back to the normal amount for the area,” Pidge finished, groaning.  “The environmentalists are gonna love this.”

“Ten thousand years.  How much shit evolved to survive this part of the world and now is finding out that the rules got switched?” Lance said.  “Wagers, anyone?”

“Yikes.”

Shiro winced.  “Guess it’s too late to fix that, huh?”

“C’mon, guys.  It’s not like Abi meant to… fuck up the environment or whatever.  Probably thought a paladin would drop by much sooner than ten thousand years, yeah?” Lance said.

“Yes,” Allura said.  “That must be it.”

“Well, one desert gets rain now because we arrived.  I say the world can thank us later,” Keith said.  “Let’s just grab pictures of what we came here for, and-“

He never finished the sentence.

Behind them, disgustingly bright floodlights flashed on, momentarily blinding them all.  Sirens blared.  A booming voice on a loudspeaker bellowed out the words all of them had been afraid of.

“Attention, intruders.  This area is a designated no-trespassing zone under sanctions of the United States government.  You will be taken in for questioning; do not resist.  We’ll also be impounding your… vehicle… cat… thing.  Don’t think I don’t recognize this thing.  McClain, I will find a way to blame you, see if I don’t.”

Lance, Pidge, and Hunk groaned.  “Our luck,” Lance said.  “Fuckin’ _Iverson_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i ain't dead, i got a job in my field and moved to a new state and have been trying to keep up with life itself and you bet your ass i haven't abandoned this fic because i have, like, the next 20 chapters planned out in my head


	21. Reanimation

Pidge got a head-start on swearing up a storm.

Keith wasn’t doing much better.

Shiro, bless him, kept his head.  “Allura!  They don’t know anything about your involvement and we should keep it that way.”  Allura blinked, confused.  “You’re not exactly human, and the Garrison isn’t exactly in a negotiating kind of mood.  Ever.”

“Fuck,” Lance muttered.  “I forgot to think of Alteans as aliens.  You’re right.  But you should stay back, too, Shiro.”

“But-“

Keith cut him off.  “He’s right.  Look what they did to you the last time you popped back to Earth unannounced.  They’ll strap you to a table and try to take your arm apart, ten bucks to nothing.”  Shiro went a little pale.

“Plus Allura still has to scan the runes in the rest of the cave and could probably do with muscle in case of an emergency.  You wouldn’t leave the princess by herself, would you?” Hunk asked.  The crafty bastard, playing on Shiro’s sense of honor and decency.  Lance could’ve kissed him.

“Uhh, guys?  Might want to pick it the fuck up.  Iverson hasn’t got a reputation for patience and I swear to God, if he just tosses in a grenade or something and we all get blown up, I’m coming back as a ghost and annoying Lance for the rest of his unnatural life,” Pidge said.

“Time to go!” Hunk said, grabbing Keith with one arm and Lance with the other, hoisting them over his shoulders in a twin fireman carry.  Allura and Shiro nodded as one, heading to the back of the cave in an effort not to be discovered.  They could only pray nobody would run a thermal scan on the place.

“Nobody shoot!  We’re submitting!  I’m real keen on not getting shot today!” Hunk bellowed.

Iverson stood about a dozen meters away, looking like he flavored his coffee with skunk spray this morning.  An army-issue poncho did little to keep him dry, but drowned rat or not, he struck an impressive-looking figure, arms crossed over his chest haughtily.  A whole damn entourage of Garrison troops in Humvees, every one of them aiming rifles straight at the paladins, accompanied him.

“Probably should have thought about that before showing your ugly faces here again, huh?” Iverson yelled back.

“Correction: my face is beautiful and perfect,” Lance muttered.  Hunk smacked him.  “Oy!  Dude, just let me be petty.”

“Garett! Drop McClain and… is that Kogane’s ass I see there?  Whatever.  On your feet, boys.  Hands up.  You know the drill.  I’d expect better from you and Gunderson here if I hadn’t already figured out Gunderson is actually Holt.  Had me going there for a hot second, didn’t you?  Thought you were such smarty-fuckin’-farties, huh?”  Pidge winced.  Hunk dropped both his charges onto the ground, their feet sinking into the mud with a disgusting squelching noise.  Both of them wore identical surly expressions.

Honestly, today had been going _great_ right up until now.

Lance glanced up at Shir’abi, her enormous form barely visible through all the rain, even with the floodlights on all around them.  Even he had to admit the Garrison was extra-ballsy to pick a fight with her when she easily stood a good five stories above their dinky little Humvees.  All she’d have to do was sit on one and it’d be over pretty fast.  Keith must have caught him making a considering look or something, because he immediately sent a glare Lance’s direction, _Don’t even think about it_ written all over his face.

“I wasn’t gonna,” he muttered.  “Just saying it’s an option.”

“It’s not an option.  You can’t just destroy things when they become inconvenient for you.”

“Pretty sure I can, but what you’re saying here is that I shouldn’t.  That about sum it up?”

“HEY!  DINGUS!  Shut your damn pie holes and be arrested _quietly_ , yeah?”

Lance glared something fierce, and watched Iverson flinch back a little, never realizing that the sharp blues of his eyes were cutting through the rain and the night.

They were led to an armored vehicle in the back of the entourage, cuffs summarily clapped on all of them.  Pidge nearly snorted at the sight of them, fully aware that she could slip them off anytime she wanted, what with her infinitesimally small wrists.  Not that she enlightened the Garrison officials guarding them of that.

Hey, wait.

“Lirsen?” Pidge asked, squinting at one of the guards as she was directed to a bench in the truck bed.

“Hey, Pidge,” the guy said.

“The hell are you doing here?”

“Snorting lines and shagging nines, what do you think?  That stunt you pulled made them put the whole place on lockdown.  They started investigating the rest of us as potential _sleeper cells_.  Can’t believe you didn’t listen to me when I told you that McClain prick was bad news.”

“I am right here, jackass.  Say it to my-“ Lance got the butt of a gun to his solar plexus, all the air driven out of him at once.  A face was up in his the next moment.

“I said, ‘you’re bad news’.  I’m on orders to shoot you if you resist too hard, and so is everybody else in the convoy, so if you don’t keep your mouth to yourself, you might end up pretty solidly dead,” Lirsen growled.

“If only,” Keith muttered.  It got a quiet snort of laughter from the rest of the paladins, and a really weirded-out look from Lirsen.

“Whatever.”  And with that, the guy slammed the doors of the truck shut.  They were on their way.

“I don’t think they noticed Shiro or Allura,” Keith said, keeping his voice down.

“Yet.  So how are we playing this?”

“Look… Call me crazy, but what if we just… like… told the truth?” Hunk said.

They all gave him A Look.

“No, not like-!  Christ, quit looking at me like that.  Not like the whole thing.  Just, y’know, bits ‘n’ pieces.  They already know the Lions are a thing, no getting around that.  What if we just told them that she’s a space ship built by an ancient race of aliens and she’s extremely valuable and more aliens keep trying to steal her and those aliens have very big guns so we’ve been trying to keep Earth safe by being not-here?”

“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Pidge said.  “Any idiot glancing at the stuff down in that cave – and you know they snooped after we left – would see the diagrams of Voltron forming.  They’ll know there’s more than one Lion.”

“But they have no way of proving that we _have_ them,” Hunk said.  “Or that we understand the significance of what we have.”

“So we’re playing the stupid card indefinitely?” Keith asked.  “Not gonna work.  Inevitably, one of us is going to mention something we couldn’t possibly know according to our own cover story.  They’re going to figure it out.”

“Plus they saw Lance’s eyes do the thing.”

Lance’s head jerked up.  “What?  Heard my name; what’s going on?”

“You weren’t listening?”

“Sorry, man.  Was paying attention to Abi.  Some guys back by the cave are trying to figure out how to move her and I’ve been trying to eavesdrop,” he said with a shrug.

The other three sat up a little straighter.  “Yeah?  What are they saying?”

“Eh, normal stuff.  Like wondering what she’s made out of, what fuels she uses, who built her, wondering how much she weighs, what kinda guns she’s got.  I think half of them are out of the engineering sector, ‘cause they’re geeking out about her,” he said.  “One of them took a selfie with her, I think.”

“A reasonable course of action.”

“I thought so, too.”

“Well, anyway, we were saying we can’t lie about all the magic crap because you blew it with your glowy-eye bullshit,” Keith said.

“My… what?” He stared at them blankly.

Keith rolled his eyes and Hunk pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I don’t think he knows, man.”

“My eyes glow?  Seriously?”  Lance looked incredulous.

“Uh, yeah.  Not all the time.  Normally just when you use the ice stuff, or talk to your Lion, or when you’re really pissed off.  He probably wouldn’t have noticed if it were light out, but in the dark…” Pidge said, letting it trail off.

Lance frowned.  “Sorry ‘bout that.  I can try to figure out some sort of cover for that, if Iverson believes he didn’t imagine it or something.”

“If he does believe his eyes, you’re in a lot more trouble than we are.  They were prepared to dissect Shiro just for having alien tech that they didn’t understand.  Imagine what they’d be willing to do to you once they find out that you’re _immortal_ ,” Pidge said.  They all shifted uncomfortably in their seats, bouncing a little when the Humvee hit a couple of rocks here and there.

“So we’re not telling them.”

“Yeah.  Mum’s the word.”

“Maybe don’t even let them know you have magic or anything.  Maybe you can say it’s… alien food affecting you.  Eat enough carrots and you turn orange, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that weird alien foods can change your eye color,” Hunk said.

“And what about body temperature?” Lance asked darkly.  “Do they drop your core temp below survivable levels, too?”

…Shit.  This whole thing was too much to lie about.

“Maybe we ought to consider just making a break for it.  I don’t feel like I should have to explain myself to these dipsh-“

“Our families,” Pidge said, cutting him off.  A silence fell as her eyes moved over the others.  “We were wondering what they told our families.  Well… this is a golden opportunity to find out.  Maybe get in contact with them.  We can make a break for it later, after we’ve gotten them to talk a little.  They aren’t the only ones after important information.”

Lance swallowed and looked down at his cuffed wrists.

…Yeah.  If Keith wanted to bail out earlier, no one would blame him.  It wasn’t like he had anything to gain from sticking around.  The rest of them, though?  Lance would stay.  From the look on Hunk’s face, so would he. 

“…You think they already called our parents?  Like, when they noticed we touched down?” Hunk said.

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  Depends on what story they fed people when we disappeared.”

“We’re not dead,” Lance said.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“No, I mean, they didn’t tell people we died like they did with Shiro.  That guy?  Lirsen or whatever?  He wasn’t at all surprised to see us alive.  When Shiro disappeared, they lied to all the cadets, too.  If they’d been fed that fake story, he’d have been confused to see us, but he wasn’t.  Sounded more like he’d been stewing in his own bitterness about it for a while.”  The others nodded.  Made sense.  Some of the tension left them.

Abruptly, the Humvee wrenched to a stop, throwing them all into a pile on the floor.

“Ugh!  Get off, you’re squishing me!” Pidge groaned out from the bottom.

Lance was second up.  “…My liver… I had such solid plans to devote that to a life of alcohol abuse,” he said with a moan of pain.

“Sorry, dudes,” Hunk said, top dog.

The back doors were thrown open, bright lights of the Garrison hangar bursting through.

“Get up.  You’re expected.”

* * *

Allura worked as fast as she could, scanning the rest of the runes.  They stretched the entirety of the cave, the blue glow growing fainter and fainter as Lance drew further and further away.  She would just have to run through what she could and hope it was enough.

Luckily, she’d had the foresight to bring a second scanner (in case the first one broke or wasn’t working properly), and handed it off to Shiro.  Double the speed.  He could work the left side and she’d work the right.

“…I know nothing of your ‘Garrison’,” she confessed in the darkness.

Shiro heaved a sigh.  “For all that I spent five years there, I’m not sure I understand it, either.  It used to be kind of a cross between a military academy and a science academy.  Exploring the stars, flying planes and rockets and space stations for the sake of the world, not just any one country… It seemed like my dream job when I was younger.  I can understand why Pidge joined, and why Hunk joined, and heck – even why Keith joined up.  Keith just loved piloting, and the place you go when you want to fly scary dangerous things is the Garrison.  Lance?  Still have no idea why he joined up.  I don’t think he’s ever mentioned it.”

“So why do all of them seem to have such apprehension about it?” Allura asked, adjusting the exposure on the scanner with a frown as the glow grew ever dimmer.

“…The Garrison told them all that the Kerberos mission… my mission… died.  That Pidge’s family was dead, that it was my fault, and that everyone should give up hoping we’d return.  Pidge and Keith didn’t believe it for a second.”

“Why would they lie?”

“Because the alternative is to admit they have no idea what’s really out there.  I don’t know how much anyone knew.  If they knew aliens took us, there’s no way they’d ever release that information.  It would mean that there is a vast, unknown hostile force out there ready to kidnap humans for no reason.  They’re terrified of that simple truth.  Anyone who knew what really happened would never share that knowledge, especially not with the general public.  More likely is that they just lost all communication with our mission and came to the wrong conclusion that everything went haywire, and rather than admit weakness by saying ‘I don’t know what happened’, they made up a story about how we were never coming back,” Shiro said.

Allura paused.  “But you did come back.”

“Yeah.  And they weren’t too happy about that.  Seemed all too happy to strap me to a table and knock me out while I was screaming for mercy, though,” he muttered, failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“…Oh,” she said.  What else could she have to say to that?  Shiro had probably trusted these people.  Been friends with them.  And then been betrayed so wholly by his homeland.  The people who were supposed to make sure he got home safely had done everything in their power to abandon him.

“You don’t think they’ll hurt the other Paladins, do you?” she asked quietly.

He thought about it for a moment.  “Probably not.  Although I’m really not sure of that.  They just… don’t have any reason to hurt them.  None of them have alien prosthetics to disassemble.  Also, when I got back… I wasn’t really in my right mind.  I was in hysterics, and I was running off leftover adrenaline from the escape.  I probably looked like a rabid animal limping home.  Some part of me isn’t surprised they sedated me.  Anyone would have been wary of me in that situation.”

Allura’s mouth tightened.  “I don’t think it gives them the right to violate your bodily autonomy.  I doubt they even bothered to listen to a word out of your mouth.”

Shiro made a noise that sounded an awful lot like concession.

“Thought as much.  There were a number of representatives on Altea who were like that.  Once they come to a decision, there’s no budging them, even if it’s in their best interest to listen to you.  People set in their ways are the greatest bar to progress.  And as for those who would deny danger right in front of their faces for the sake of avoiding any semblance of weakness…” She gave an undignified snort of disgust, which spoke of her opinion.  “One would think gross incompetence would be a far greater show of weakness to avoid, but if they wish to crash and burn, who am I to deny them?”

Shiro cracked a smile in the dark.  She was on the warpath now.  No stopping her.

Unless one were clever enough to change the subject.

“What are your thoughts on all these writings?  Any clue what they say?” Shiro asked.

“Eh?  Oh… some are symbol substitutions, very simplistic a code.  Makes sense, I suppose.  If I had to cover the entirety of a cave in instructions, I’d likely pick something easy-to-remember, too.”  She pointed at one particular symbol, standing alone with a bit more spacing on either side of it.  “I know that one must be a-“ An ungodly noise likely intended to be the phonetic reading of the glyph came from her throat, “but the rest will have to come one at a time.  Shouldn’t be too hard to decipher with time and a pad for notes.  He wouldn’t have made it prohibitively difficult.”

“’He’?  The last Paladin?”

“…Yes.”

“You were friends with him.”

She swallowed.  “I held all the Paladins very dear.  They are… _were_ … family to me.”

Shiro snapped the last picture of the runes on his half of the wall.  “Don’t give up so easily.  Maybe they’re like me.  Maybe they’ll pop up one day from the dead out of nowhere and give you a hell of a scare, and you’ll wonder how you ever could have doubted them.”

In spite of all her common sense and upbringing, Allura started laughing.

Unlikely.  Impossibly so.  But sweet of him to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some downtime at work whenever i'm not messing with making dead things glow in the dark and then taking pictures of the corpses, so what's basically happening is that I'm getting paid to write Voltron fanfic. Living the dream.


	22. Rolodex

There wasn’t really anything Allura or Shiro could do once the glow faded but sit around and scroll through the images, trying to puzzle out the code.  Shiro, bless him, was useless.  Simple symbol substitution ciphers were only something you could decode if you knew the target language, and Allura was the only one who could read the Altean alphabet between them.  Having nothing to do made him antsy.

His whole team had more or less been dragged away, possibly to be court-martialed, never mind that they’d probably saved several dozen planets and thousands of species in having done what they did.  Three of the four had gone AWOL (Keith not included simply because he’d already dropped out of the Garrison and didn’t have to listen to a damn word they said) and all four of them had broken into restricted access facilities to bust Shiro out.  As a civilian, it was probably going to be worse for Keith in that regard.  He could be accused of espionage, even if the prosecutors knew it was bullshit and just wanted to make his life difficult.  Pidge had it worst of all, having infiltrated a military base under a false identity, hacked governmental records to create a fake Social Security number and FBI profile for herself, and listened in on innumerable confidential military transmissions on the scanner she’d built to listen for alien activity.  If they _didn’t_ try to accuse her of espionage, Shiro’d eat his shoe.

What a world.

Why did they think it was smart to come back again?

“Hey, Allura,” he said softly, trying not to break her concentration.  “Anything popping out at you?”

She had a screen in front of her, fingers flicking over it a few times here and there as she attempted to swap out letters and take notes.  Her lips shifted around her face in impatience.  “I’ve translated the first section entirely, but it looks like the letters are shifted for every section thereafter.  Each section uses a different code, so they all have to be broken separately.”

Shiro winced.  “So it might take about ten times longer than expected to read this, simple cipher or no, huh?”

“Exactly.”

“What did the first bit say?”

Allura scrolled back up to show Shiro a completely meaningless jumble of Altean.  She caught the look on his face and began reading it aloud.  “May the moons and stars of Altea protect this order, and this cache, for so long as secrecy be required.  For they what realize their purpose in the midst of these halls, may you love and be loved as I did, and do.  Know that all flows into all else, and that your connection to this place and these words will be explained in full, as follows.  Godspeed.”

“So… saying hi to the new paladin and writing them an instruction manual?”

“More or less, yes.  Given the author we’re talking about here, I fully expect his prose to devolve into crude jokes and pop culture references halfway in, so it ought to be easier to translate down the line,” Allura said, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“It did sound pretty stuffy,” Shiro agreed.  “So what was he like?  The author.”

Allura thought for a moment.  “He looked terribly like you.  Perhaps a bit taller.  Worse fashion sense.”  Shiro cracked a grin.  “Had quite the jaw on him and talked almost as much as Lance does.  He was generally better with delivering cutting insults, though, not that he did it often.”

“Almost hard to believe someone can out-snark Lance, although once in a blue moon I’ve watched him crash and burn on a comeback.  Was the Red Paladin a lot like Keith, then?”

“Oh heavens, no.  The Red Paladin was my father.  There are brief moments where I feel Keith is as dependable as my father was, but the illusion is usually shattered when he gets into a petty spat with Lance.  My father was also much more openly affectionate with his teammates.”

“Can’t picture Keith as ‘openly affectionate’.  Not when people are looking at him, anyway.  But don’t think for a minute he wouldn’t throw himself on a grenade for every one of us.  He’s a bit dim that way,” Shiro said, settling back against the wall of the caves, frowning.

“You’re worried about them,” Allura said.

“You’re not?”

“Of course I’m worried, but I understand little of your planet’s military structure or disciplinary systems.  And from what you’ve said, even if I did, it might not apply because the Garrison is not a typical military facility.  I have no idea what to expect.  And for that matter… our paladins have gone through any number of trials.  Not a one of them is faint of heart, and I don’t believe a single one of them will let a simple detainment hold them back.  They’ll return, no doubt screaming about how we all need to pack into the Blue Lion and leave this very instant because a full battalion is right behind them.”

Shiro snorted.  Yeah, that sounded about right.  He could almost hear Hunk’s panicked screaming now.

“Well, I feel so much better now.”

“Don’t you?”

* * *

The Garrison hadn’t changed a bit since they left it, really.  Yeah, patrols looked a little tighter than they used to be, but that was the full extent of the change.

To Lance’s disappointment, their escort to the center of campus wasn’t Lirsen, but about five other guys, which was a crying shame because he’d been planning on farting right next to the shmuck the whole time.  Dreams died hard.

And then things went a little squirrely.

“All right, split ‘em up.  McClain’s in the far left, then Holt, then Kogane, then Garett.  Come on boys, let’s get moving,” Iverson said, gesturing to isolated rooms that were generally used as testing centers to make sure nobody could cheat (quitter talk; of course it was still possible to cheat in one of those things – Lance would know).  Guess they’d been repurposed for interrogation or somesuch ridiculous escapade.

“What the hell?  Come on, man!  Seriously?” Keith snapped, shoved towards the rooms.

“Yeah, ‘seriously’, Kogane.  You might not be one of our boys anymore, but you sure as hell broke a lot of laws on your way out of the world.  We can’t just pretend none of it happened.”

“What, like you guys pretended a whole mission was dead and instead tried to experiment on the damn survivor?  Like that?” Pidge spat.

“And you, little miss thang,” Iverson said, “wouldn’t even know he was here unless you hacked our security feeds, which we both know would land your ass in jail all by itself, so watch it.”

She spluttered.  “’Little miss-‘?!”

“Try not to kill anyone, Pidge,” Hunk muttered.  “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

Lance didn’t envy whoever got stuck interrogating Pidge.  Or Keith.  They had no idea what they were up against.

Then he was summarily shoved into his own interrogation chamber and he wasn’t going to have much time to worry about anyone else’s smart mouth.

The room was as boring and blank as he remembered it being, nothing on the walls but off-white paint, not so much as an electrical outlet or crown molding.  A clear plastic table and one of those ridiculous plastic chairs they made for little kids, but bigger.  Nothing heavy or sharp to use as a bludgeon here, and supposedly nowhere to hide a note or a phone if you were using one to cheat.  Completely cut off from the world.

Two men were already in the room, one seated across from the empty chair clearly intended for Lance, and the other in a corner, peering at a notebook of some kind.  Neither looked like Garrison stock – for starters, they were wearing suits with visitor badges clipped to the breast pocket.  Feds.  Lance swallowed down the infinitesimal moment of panic.  The trick was to pretend like you were as calm as could be, like you had every right to be there doing whatever you wanted.  If you acted nervous, they could smell that shit on you a mile away.  Iverson had wandered in, standing against the corner by the door, no doubt to serve as a guard against escape.  Didn’t matter, because Lance wasn’t stupid enough to run.

“Please,” the one at the table said, “Have a seat.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lance said, as if he had the right to refuse.  He plonked his butt down, nearly tipping the chair over in the process.  Smooth like peanut butter.  “What can I do for you boys?”  Never mind that both of them were at least twice Lance’s age, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to call them ‘sir’. 

The guy at the table gave a wry smile.  “I’m Special Agent Morrison and this would be Special Agent Kitteridge.  I understand you’ve been off-planet for the last year?  Had to be exciting, huh?”

They were talking to him like he was five.  May as well give ‘em what they wanted to hear.

“The literal coolest, dudes.  Did you know there’s a Space Mall?  Like, hand to God.  I dunno if it’s actually called ‘Space Mall’, but it’s a mall and it’s in space, so.  I can’t read that alien shit.  Anyway they have stores full of weird awesome stuff.  There was even a shop full of Earth junk, including a cow.  I bought video games and they just threw in the cow for free.  It was pretty great.  Hunk got a part-time job in the food court.  I think they built a statue in his honor when he left, because their food is pretty gross and Hunk is a golden god of cuisine.”

“…A part-time job.  In space.  In a food court.”  Morrison looked appropriately left-footed.  “Uh… huh.”

“Don’t forget the cow.”

To all appearances, Kitteridge was delivering a swift prayer for strength and patience as he jotted down the very salient detail that cows were involved.  Iverson was grinning solely because he was, for a change, not on the receiving end of Lance’s ridiculous remarks.

“The, uh, ‘Space Mall’ aside, I’d like to talk about when you left Earth.  More specifically, _how_ you left Earth.”

“Oh, you mean my giant telekinetic robot cat.  Yeah, she’s the best.  What about her?”

Morrison twitched.  “Telek-? No, you know what?  Never mind.  Yes, the giant robot cat.  That robot was on government property, Mister McClain.  Did it never occur to you the cat was also government property?”

Lance snorted.  “Literally never.”

“This is very serious, Mister McClain.  That spacecraft is the product of decades of government research and after countless prototypes, it is by far the most advanced technology we-“

Lance couldn’t help it.  He started cackling.  These morons honestly thought he would buy it.  “Bro, the government didn’t invent a damn thing on her and we both know it.  She don’t belong to _anyone_ , least of all you.”

The agent’s face tightened.  “Because you know so much about it, do you?”

“Dude.  My cat’s telekinetic.  She told me herself what she was and where she came from-"

Kitteridge interrupted.  "You mean telepathic."

"Pardon?"

"If she's- er, _it's_ telling you things psychically, that's telepathy.  You said 'telekinetic', but you meant 'telepathic'."

Lance scrunched up his face, squinting at the man in the corner in the most annoying way possible.  "Mmmm no, I think you're wrong there."

"No, but - that's what it means!"

"You sure?"

"Yes!"

"You choose to believe that.  I won't stop you."  Kitteridge looked ready to beat his head against a wall.  Iverson's shoulders shook with barely-contained laughter.  "Anyway, I'm saying I know where my girl's from and it sure wasn’t from here.  Definitely older than a couple of decades, too.  By like a factor of a thousand.  My baby here probably predates the human species as a whole, so don’t try to sell me a crock about how the ancient Sumerians managed to invent her along with the wheel in the same timeframe.  Nice try, but no.”

“The robot wasn’t yours to take.”

“And _she_ wasn’t yours to claim, but here we are.”

“You stole-“

“She wasn’t yours!”

“You stole a spacecraft and abandoned your government, your country, and your _planet_.  You think bickering over terminology is going to protect you?”

“There wasn’t much of a choice at the time,” Lance snapped.

Shit.  Should not have said that.

“And what does that mean, exactly?” Morrison said, pouncing on it.

He looked for a lie, any lie.  A half-truth, maybe.  “…Ab- er, Blue got up and flew off on autopilot once we were inside.  We were just poking around, seeing what was in there, and she decided to go off on adventures.  The rest of us were just along for the ride.”  Wouldn’t do to call her Abi here.  Rule one: don’t speak another language in front of feds, especially a middle-eastern language.

“Oh?  And yet you found your way back to Earth pretty easy once you felt like it.”

“When a giant robot cat drops you off on distant planets, you know?  Yeah, you take a look around town first.  Not like I’m in any more trouble coming back now than I would have been had we done a U-turn at the time.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.  But we’re shelving that for now.  What I want to know is how you got past the shielding.”

Lance blinked.  Huh?

“Blue, as you call it, was protected by a repulsion field that nothing could penetrate.  How’d you get in?”

He didn’t know what to say.  He panicked.  He told the truth.  “…I knocked.”

“You knocked.”

Lance shrugged.  “Seemed like the polite thing to do.”

Eyes narrowed.  “You’re full of it.”

“No, I swear, that is what happened!  Ask Keith, okay?  He was there right next to me when I did it.”

“Sure, ask your friend who certainly has _no_ incentive to lie for your sake, I’m sure that’ll hold up in court.  No, you got past the most advanced particle barrier known to man and we both know you didn’t do it by knocking.  That is a dangerous foreign spacecraft and you knew how to operate it.  Its weapons and guidance systems, how much do you know?  We can detain you in Guantanamo indefinitely until you figure out it’s better to tell us everything.  You sure you want to betray your country and rot there until the end of time just for this?  Why would you bother covering everything up unless you had something incredibly dangerous to hide?  So keep in mind that I’m not falling for any of your cutesy bullshit.  I can have your mug spread over every damn wanted poster board in the country.”

Iverson had looked steadily more uncomfortable, shifting around, adjusting his posture, staring at the floor.  “Look,” he muttered, drawing the immediate attention of the agents, “I know this kid.  Sure McClain’s a fucking punk and a moron, but he’s not a terrorist.  Just a loser who found something cool and took it for a joy ride.  We don’t chuck people in Guantanamo for that now, do we?” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Never thought I’d say this, but I’m backing up Iverson on this one.  He’s got a solid point.”

“When I ask you to do my job for me, you’ll know.  For the time being, I’d suggest keeping your mouth shut, the both of you,” Morrison growled.  “You’re going in solitary.  The Garrison wants to run some tests, make sure none of you came back with any alien STDs or something, I don’t know.  But after that, you’re under our jurisdiction.  You’d better come up with a lie more believable than, ‘I knocked’.”  Morrison stood up, Kitteridge following shortly after.  Iverson glowered at both as they left, mouth curled in clear distaste.

“Kidjo,” he yelled to a cadet standing guard, “this one’s going in solitary.  Find Steinberg and escort McClain over, yeah?”

“Yes, sir!” Kidjo said, scuttling away and returning a few seconds later with a girl ten times as buff as he was, each gently nudging at Lance to get him moving.

This was bad.  This was really, really bad.  Not even counting the whole avoiding-prison thing, there was going to be a physical.  They’d notice.  Know for sure.  There were things he couldn’t explain away with lies and couldn’t admit to in truth, because either would make the situation even worse.  And running… even if he could run by himself, he’d be leaving Hunk, Pidge, and Keith behind.  Not an option.

 **I will not let them take you.  Just let me know what to do** , Abi told him.

 _Yeah, well, if I knew what to do, that’d be a start_ , Lance thought back.  _We’ll just have to brainstorm.  What are the odds you can patch me through to the others, through their lions?_

**I’ll see what I can do.**

* * *

Iverson dug through the filing cabinet under his desk.  Had to be in here somewhere.  One stupid binder in a sea of the damn things.  It didn’t help matters that he couldn’t read his own handwriting half the time.  Truly appalling chicken scratch.

Eventually his fingers nudged the leather binder way in the back, buried under a pack of cigarettes and financial reports from three years ago.  He found the ‘M’ tab and flicked it open, finger running down the list of names and numbers.  He didn’t have far to go.

Iverson grabbed his phone – his cell phone, couldn’t risk making the call on a military-designated line – and dialed the number his finger rested on.  After three rings, someone picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hey.  Look, I’m not saying something happened, and I’m not _not_ saying something happened, but let’s just say you oughta show up to the Garrison with a lawyer.”

“I… Yes.  Of course.  Thanks for the heads-up.  I’m on my way now.”

“You’re welcome.”

He breathed deeply.  Three more phone calls to make.  He was going to do the thing right, or not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So who's excited for the media to rip our president a new one?


	23. Molt

The instant Keith heard there would be a physical, he felt his gut clench.  Well, there went any hope of getting out of there with only a few felony charges.  Lance’s… _condition_ , as it were, wasn’t exactly something he could hide if anyone with three whole functioning brain cells got too close.  Heck, Keith was almost surprised that the trainees escorting them on base hadn’t noticed anything odd upon touching him.  No, wait, it was still raining.  He could hear it beating on the tin roof, high above their heads in solitary.  Rain chilled the skin.  Anyone just touching him wouldn’t notice anything odd, even if the guards hadn’t been wearing thick gloves.

Briefly, he entertained the idea of asking Red to swoop down and bite the lid off this place.

Although… that was a thought.

Not the busting out with Red thing; that was stupid.  Contacting Red in general might not be the worst plan.  Red could talk to Blue, and Blue could talk to Lance, and Blue and Green had been in contact before, and Pidge had managed to hear Green just fine.  The odd man out was Hunk.  Three out of four wasn’t bad, though.  And maybe they could get into contact with either Shiro or Allura, let them know what was going on (not that Keith had much of a grasp on the situation, but at least it was something).

Keith took a deep breath.  Okay.  He could do this.  Pidge had sucked at it before, but she’d gotten better.  No reason to assume he couldn’t do the same.

“…Red?  Buddy?  You with me?”

There was almost a rumble, deep in his bones.  It might not be a yes, but it felt significant anyway.

“Look, I know I’m not used to this, and it sucks.  Trust me; I get it.  We don’t have our comms and we only brought Blue and you’re probably kinda pissy about that.  There’s ended up being a little bit of trouble – nothing we can’t handle on our own, but we’d still like to be in contact with each other as much as we can be.  The whole thing’s dumb and I’m sorry you have to deal with it.  I just need to be able to talk to the others, and you’re my only hope at doing that.  Sorry I only hit you up when I need a favor.”

Keith tried to listen.  Calmed his breathing, like Coran said to.  Opened his mind and stopped expecting anything, like Lance said to.

He’d asked Pidge what it was like, after they’d rescued Lance.  She’d made a perturbed face and gave him some of the least helpful advice he’d received in his life.

“Look man, it’s different for everyone.  Blue is all _woosh_ -y and Green is all _nyoom_ -y.  No clue what Red’s like.  When the time comes, you’ll figure it out.”

Yeah, well, fat lot of ‘figuring it out’ he was doing right now.

The rumble began again, the faintest whisper of it.

He could feel something.  Slight, but there.  His heart started thudding in his chest, breathing speeding up.  There was too much energy for it not to.  Coran was wrong – he didn’t need to slow down to hear Red.  He needed to speed up.  Keith’s muscles started flexing involuntarily.  He wanted to get up, run, not be confined in the little box of a cell the Garrison found for him.  He closed his eyes and let the moment run away with him.

Red’s mindscape was searing hot, everything shimmering and swirling with it.  Keith honestly couldn’t tell what it looked like, only that he felt right at home there.

“Red?  Where-?”

She was there.  Enormous.  Petulant at being left behind.  Batting at him with a paw like he was little more than her errant cub, wandered off into trouble too big for him.

“Sorry, girl,” he said, shrugging.  “Shit happens.”

Her shoulders rolled, as if to say, _It does indeed_.

“Can we talk to Pidge or Lance or anyone like this?”

To all appearances, she ignored him and got up, padding over to what might’ve been a massive pool of magma, bubbling away.  With one paw, she swiped at the rock holding it in place, and the molten earth spilled forward, burning everything as it flowed far faster than it had any right to move.  Keith swore and made to run, but something stopped him.  Red wouldn’t do something to hurt him.  Whatever she had in mind, it was best to see it through.

Why she couldn’t just talk to him or have normal conversations like all the other lions seemed to do was beyond Keith.

The magma burbled around his feet, levels rising to flood him in its grasp.  If he thought it had been hot before, it was _burning_ now.

He been right, though:  it didn’t hurt.

And then the voices washed over him.

- _then we’re screwed_.  That was Pidge.

 _Look, I’m doing what I can.  If Abi can retreat without us and come back to pick us up later, it’ll make a pretty good distraction.  Maybe while everybody’s flipping out about her getting up and moving on her own, the four of us can make a break for it,_ Lance’s voice said.

_We’ll have to contact Keith and Hunk first.  Otherwise they won’t know what to do.  And how do you plan on getting the doors open, huh?  We’re locked in._

_They’re doing the physicals at dawn, right?  Dawn’s in, like, an hour._

_You’re going to risk going to the physicals?  While you’re all… you know?_

_If we play our cards right, I can go last.  Abi starts making a ruckus right in the middle, and boom – all we have to worry about is a doctor.  Or a cute nurse.  Fingers crossed for a cute nurse._

Keith bust in.  _You’re a fuckin’ creep, Lance._

Silence in the blankness of shared headspace.  Then-

_Keith!  What the fuck?!  How did you-?_

_Holy shit!_

_Pidge!  Pidge, I’m not imagining shit, right?  Like, he’s-?_

_Yeah_.

… _Well good for you!  I figured you get the hang of it eventually.  In thirty years or something, whatever.  This makes life a little easier, I guess.  You managed to talk with Red?_ Lance asked.

Keith bristled.  _Uhh… not exactly.  I can’t hear a word she says.  But she took me to this weird interdimensional space or something and now I can at least hear you._

_Huh.  Give it time.  If she’s paying you any attention at all, it’s a good thing._

_It takes a lot of practice_ , assured Pidge.  _Took me like four hours just to get in contact with Lance, and that was with the psychic phone ringing off the hook._

_Yup.  I’ve been keeping her awake.  Shame on me._

_Don’t you need to sleep, too?_

_No_.

_…Oh.  Right.  Sorry._

_Oh, yeah, bee-tee-dubbs.  They swiped one of my hearing aids.  They think your handiwork is alien witchcraft, Pidge.  Take it for the compliment it is._

_It_ is _alien witchcraft_.

 _Guys.  On-task.  We’re busting out during the physicals?_ Keith asked.

 _I never approved that plan_ , Pidge said.

_Yeah, well, I don’t hear you coming up with a better one._

_You can’t see me, but I’m sticking out my tongue.  Very important._

_How can you talk and stick your tongue out at the same time?_

_How can you telepathically communicate through robots?_

… _Touché_.

_So yeah, all right, fine.  Yes, we’re busting out during the physicals.  Lance is going to make a distraction and we’ll all jump ship, if we can.  If there aren’t twenty armed guards itching to put holes in us._

_And where do we go after we’ve gotten out?  Nothing but desert for miles around_.

_…I… uh…_

_Well, Plan Meister?  You got nothin’, huh?_ Pidge said.  The smugness was unmistakable.

 _Shut up_.

 _The garage is pretty closeby to the med bay.  I think swiping a vehicle might be doable.  If we head the opposite direction from wherever this distraction of yours is going on, we might make it a mile or so away.  Think Blue can pick us up?_ Keith asked.

_She can, but Shiro and Allura would need to get loaded up, too.  There’s our problem._

… _We can’t contact them yet._

 _No.  Been trying all night, but no dice.  I’m half-wondering if all the magicky runes down there in the cave are fucking with whatever magic I’ve got going for me.  I’m doing my best, but the fact remains that I have no clue what I’m doing_ , Lance said.

_Has Blue moved from where she was at the opening of the cave?_

_Nope.  I thought it would be a bad idea to let the Garrison know our lions can move independently of a pilot._

_Fair.  Is she still guarded?_

… _Sort of?  Buncha guys taking pictures and writing notes and stuff.  There’s, like, two guards who are armed, and I think both are super greenies.  Shiro – heck, Allura even – could knock them out in five seconds flat._

 _Then maybe Blue can give Shiro and Allura a signal of some sort when nobody’s taking pictures.  Maybe when they go on a_ _breakfast or coffee break or something.  Or when the night shift and the day shift swap over.  Physicals are at dawn.  Seems like the right time for it_.

… _Something with her tail, maybe.  Nobody’s going to be looking at her tail.  Especially if it moves really, really slowly.  I can drop Abi a line, ask her to give it a go.  No guarantee they’re going to get or even understand the message, though,_ Lance warned.

 _Better than nothing_ , Pidge said.

 _Shit_ , Keith said.  _This is almost starting to sound like a plan_.

 _You’re gonna jinx it_ , _asshole_.

 _Perish the thought_.  Pidge paused.  _I think I hear footsteps.  Is it dawn already?_

 _Fuck.  Signing out.  Godspeed, nerds_ , Lance said.  Somehow, as his mind left the meld, Keith felt it go, a spot of refreshing coolness trickling off into the distance.

Now he’d have to figure out how to wake himself out of whatever trance he’d managed to put himself into in the first place.

He didn’t have to wonder long.  Back in reality, a rough hand smacked his shoulder.  “Get up!  It’s morning.  You good?”

Keith blinked blearily.  Sure enough, faint paths of light fell down from the weenie-ass window up in the corner of the room.  Dawn had arrived, and with it, an armed escort.  Time to have doctors poking at his bits.

He stood up and wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing.  It felt weirdly hazy in his memory, the whole of it.  He’d be seeing the other three in a few minutes, tops, so he could make eye contact with Pidge or Lance and they would probably be able to confirm with just a glance that it really happened.  It wasn’t the greatest escape plan (actually, it sucked) but it was better than nothing.  Yeah, they might not get to stick around Earth for a while, but that was just the way life worked out.  They could come back when they saved the universe.

The guards didn’t bother trying to shove Keith in the right direction; he’d made a pretty decent name for himself in his time at the Garrison, short though it was.  They knew perfectly well he knew where the med bay was.  Made for a nice change compared to Galra officers who got handsy left and right.

Pidge was already waiting when they arrived, looking sullen and sleep-deprived.  Lance was there too, who sparkled.  The ass.  He could at least _pretend_ to look exhausted.  Come to think of it, Keith didn’t feel that tired, either.  Eh, Pidge was smaller and younger and needed more sleep than the rest of them, anyway.

“’Sup, guys?” Hunk said from behind Keith, who quickly sidestepped out of the doorway.  “Yikes.  Bag check for Pidge’s eyes, huh?  I slept like a baby.”  Pidge glared at him something fierce.

Keith saw Lance’s face pinch as his eyebrows raised for a split second.  Hunk paused, smile fading.  A series of microexpressions flashed across Lance’s face, and judging from the way Hunk had stopped blinking, he got it.  Conveying the plan, probably.  How Hunk could interpret completely meaningless twitches of noses, lips, and eyebrows was a friggin’ mystery.

The doctor on duty was Selma.  Of course it was.  Stone-cold evil given human form.  If you faked a fever to get out of class, she’d flay you alive.

“All right, you miscreants.  Which one of you is getting a thermometer up the ass first?” she said, wiggling a clipboard.  Keith was pretty sure all of the thermometers on base were oral, but it was never wise to test Doctor Selma.

And, more importantly, Lance had to go last.

He sighed.  “Me, I guess.”

“Hm?  Kogane, right?  Didn’t figure you for the type to volunteer for probing.”  Her eyes flicked over to Lance.  There was no way he hadn’t hit on her before he knew better, and that was probably what she was remembering.

Keith shrugged.  “What can I say?  They said they wanted to check for alien STDs, and let’s just say I get around.”

Lance spluttered in the back, undoubtedly to counter with the number of alien species he had (no, really) come close to banging.  Thank the powers that Hunk elbowed him squarely in the gut before he could get it out.

What a champ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wen will dmv stop the suck? it a mysteree


	24. Entourage

It was in everyone’s best interests to get this done and over with as quickly as possible.  Stalling for time was less important than making sure they were busting out right as the shift changeover at the caves happened, which had to be any minute now.  Lance’s eyes were already unfocused as he got into contact with Blue, or Abi, or whatever.  He’d likely give the signal when Shiro and Allura were all clear, if they got the message like they were supposed to.

“First things first, we’re doing a blood sample.  Been eating your greens?” Selma asked.

He made a face.  “Ma’am, I’ve been eating nothing _but_ green stuff.”  Well, apart from Arby’s last night.  It’d be hilarious if he could literally see the cholesterol separate out in his blood.  And by hilarious, he meant super gross.  Same thing, really.

Keith rolled up his sleeve and tried not to look at the enormous needle Selma whipped out.  The sooner he let her play, the sooner they all got out of here.  Fingers crossed that the stuff they’d been eating, drinking, and breathing didn’t show up in a tox screen.  He doubted it would make any difference even if it did, but the fewer scientists pored over his blood samples, the better.

Especially with that whole… Galra issue.  It’d never come up in any of his other blood tests before, but nobody had been looking too closely at the time.  Might be different now.  Eh, they’d burn that bridge when they got to it.

“Just a little pinch,” she muttered, almost more to herself than to him.  Sure enough, the pinch of the needle dipping under the skin of his arm came, and Keith forced himself to find something else to concentrate on.  He looked over at Lance, whose jaw was working in little circles, eyes still glazed over.  He didn’t look perturbed any, so what was the holdup?  Did they already miss the changeover?

“Huh.  That’s weird.”

He turned back to the doctor.  “What is?”

She unscrewed a capsule, full of dark blackish-red blood, from the back of the tube hooked to the syringe.  It was already separating out a little bit into red blood cells and the rest of the innumerable cellular components that comprised normal human blood.  Just a thin, yellowish film.  All things considered, totally normal.  Not weird.

“Your temperature.  These things are normally warm, sure, but never hot.  You feeling well?  No coughing, dizzy spells, anything?”

He shook his head, nonplussed.  “Nah, totally fine.  Aside from not getting a great night’s sleep last night-“

“Oh!  That’s gotta be it.  You idiots were soaked to the bone, being out in the storm, and then they just shoved you into unheated cells with no blankets.  Morons.  No wonder you’ve got a temp.  It’s possible that it’s not bad enough for you to have noticed yet.  Or maybe you naturally run a little hotter to begin with.  Your file doesn’t have much in the way of medical records.  Just a broken arm from a certain freak motorbike incident I remember all too well.  Can’t say I’ve ever seen that many fractures from one incident that didn’t involve an industrial-grade trash compactor.  That being said, well done.  It healed up nice.”

“It really did,” Keith said.  “Works better than ever, although sometimes when it’s too cold out, it aches a little.”

She nabbed a thermometer – an oral one, thank God – and trundled back over.  “Shove this in your gob.  Two more vials and you’re done here.  I hope you’ve been drinking your fluids because we’re gonna need you all to pee in a cup.  Condolences.”

Keith glowered as he put the stupid thing under his tongue and waited for a reading.  This was stupid.  He wasn’t sick.  The others were looking a little concerned now, too.  They didn’t actually believe this crap, did they?  He rolled his eyes in a _what-can-you-do_ kind of way, hoping to convey good-natured exasperation.  They either got the hint or they didn’t.

The doctor was slapping a bit of gauze on the inside of Keith’s arm when the thermometer beeped.  She swiped it, frowning.  Her eyes went huge, then narrowed.  She ejected the protective plastic sheath into the trash, pulled on a new one, and shoved the thermometer into Lance’s mouth before anyone could stop her.  Lance made a choking noise as though fixing to spit it out, before he realized he couldn’t come up with a believable excuse as to why he’d done it.  Selma completely missed the panic on everyone’s faces.  It beeped before any of them could really react properly.

She looked at the reading, and instead of the expected shock or surprise, she just made a disgusted noise.  “Fucking cutbacks.  The thing’s broken.”  They all tried to look a little less relieved than they felt.  “Guess we’re skipping the temp thing for now, but this isn’t over.  I want you on fever reducers and anti-inflammatories, y’hear?” she said to Keith.  He nodded, privately grateful.  “But seriously.  One of you’s boiling, the other one freezing?  What the hell kind of hardware bug comes up with _that_?”

And with that, Keith felt Lance’s eyes, fully focused right on him.  Almost an accusatory expression of knowing.  All he could do was shrug to express utter confusion.  It didn’t make any sense.  It couldn’t be… like Lance was.  Keith wasn’t bonded or anything.  Couldn’t be.  He hadn’t even done anything.

But… if Lance could become immortal by accident, and didn’t tell anyone what his mistake was, then there was nothing saying another person couldn’t make the same mistake independently.  A solid dose of irony.

Selma shoved a cup in his hand and pointed to the bathroom.  Keith never thought he’d be so pleased at the concept.  He needed a minute in private.

It would almost make sense.  The temperature.  Being able to see Lance’s dreams.  Entering Red’s mindscape.  Not being able to sleep very much.  Hell, he wasn’t even hungry, and he hadn’t eaten in something like ten hours.  Being a teenage boy, he should’ve been ravenous, but he wasn’t.  His eyes flicked over to the gauze still taped at his arm.  He lifted it, peering under.

No wound.  No tiny speck of blood, no broken skin.  He’d healed in a matter of tens of seconds.

Fuck.

_Calm down, Keith.  Calm down, buddy.  You’re going to be fine.  Lance is fine.  You’ll be fine, too.  We came here to figure out how this whole ‘bond’ thing works, so it doesn’t really matter if we tack your problems onto the train of them we’ve already got going.  This can be a good thing.  Just calm your shit, and pee in a cup.  Nothing to worry about.  You’re busting out, anyway.  She didn’t even believe the readings she got, so she probably won’t so much as write them down or report them to a commanding officer.  We can keep this quiet.  No one has to know.  It can be a good thing.  This is a good thing._

Keith stared into the mirror.  He wasn’t sure he recognized the pale, fear-stricken face he saw there.

“We’re gonna be fine,” he whispered.  “Can’t be any worse than puberty.”

* * *

Lance’s brain was a battleground.

First, he’d been trying to convey a message through Abi to Shiro and the princess, which meant he kind of had to ignore anything that was going on directly in front of him.  Easy enough.  He was used to zoning out when Keith was talking.  Hardly a hardship.

From Abi’s mind, he could see and hear a little of what was going on.  Dutifully, she hadn’t moved from where she’d set down last night, just outside the caves.  She understood that they were still trying to go for the illusion that she was nothing more than a machine, incapable of autonomous movement.  The moment that changed, the government might be even more interested in her than they were before.  Either that, or they’d attempt to destroy her on the spot.  They loved Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, just so long as they didn’t get sassy with their ‘owners’.  Abi was nothing if not an endless stream of sass, which she smugly conceded.

 **They don’t deserve me** , she said.

 _Amen to that_.

The engineers had found the buttons necessary to open up the cockpit, and had started wandering around, taking way too many pictures.  Their trash from the fast food run was still there (Lance was planning on taking it to a dumpster somewhere once they finished their little excursion – he wasn’t just going to dump his trash in the desert like an animal), incriminating enough.  Fingers crossed that nobody noticed there was enough food for six people and not the four they’d apprehended.

Luckily, the engineers just shook their heads, muttered, “Teenagers,” then went about their business.  They’d cleaned up the cockpit a little, bless them, and then snapped a bunch of photos.  Obviously, no amount of button-pushing would convince Abi to get up and move, though not for lack of their trying.  For starters, the control panel wouldn’t even activate until the correct person sat in the pilot’s seat, so there weren’t any buttons to press.

Come the dawn switchover though, the engineers all trickled out, yawning and ready to get some food, then crash for a while.  The rain looked to be letting up somewhat, and they wanted to skedaddle while the clouds weren’t being obnoxious.  It might just be a temporary lull in the storm, and nobody wanted to end up soaked to the bone again.

Through Abi, Lance could feel Allura, and to a lesser extent, Shiro.  They’d escaped notice thus far, so that was one part of the plan that hadn’t gone awry yet.  As soon as the people who’d been all over Abi had vacated, her tail drifted ever-so-slowly towards the opening of the cave.  She’d been facing away from the mouth of it anyway, so her tail didn’t have far to go.  It stretched, inching its way closer.  Once it was inside and aimed downwards into the depths of the cave, the light at the tip of her tail illuminated the space.  It flashed on and off a few times, hopefully indicating that they could move when they were ready.

If they didn’t get the message… Oh, well.  There wasn’t really anything stopping them from playing decoy once Abi was off the ground with the four of them in it.  They could lure the Garrison’s forces somewhere else, then haul ass back to cave before anyone had a chance to catch up.  It’d be nicer still to make a clean getaway, but Lance wasn’t going to be greedy.  He’d take what he could get.

What Lance hadn’t been expecting was the sudden shift of Abi’s attention.  Just as his focus was on her and what was going on around her, so too was her focus on Lance’s body.

**…I can take care of this, Lance.  I think you ought to use your own eyes for a bit.  Something is happening.**

_What?  What do you mean?_

There was no point.  She gave him a psychic nudge back into his own body, and that was it.  He was back in the medbay, a needle sticking out of Keith’s arm (gross) and a thermometer sticking out of his mouth.  The guy looked pretty pissy about the whole situation.  But still, there was nothing too unusual about the sight.  Why did Abi think something was up?

And then he got his answer as the little machine beeped, and Dr. Selma checked the reading with a shocked face.  That expression then gave way to pure irritation and she came for Lance’s ass with no warning.

Shit.  Shit, shit, shit – he couldn’t let them find out.  This was very, very bad.  Hunk and Pidge looked ready to have coronaries, and Keith had frozen up altogether, all three of them staring with wide eyes and held breaths, praying the worst hadn’t just hit them square in the nuts.  Lance just tried to will all the heat in his body to his mouth.  It wasn’t at all effective, judging by the way the readout kept dropping in temperature.

Eventually the thing beeped, and the doctor yanked it out and read it.

Lance had never felt colder in his whole life, trapped in the vacuum of space incident included.

And then she’d blamed the thermometer.  Praise the Powers That Be, she blamed the thermometer.  Because not only was Lance’s temperature outside human survival range… so was Keith’s.

Lance understood Abi’s warning.

This is what she meant.

Keith… Keith was bonded.  There wasn’t another explanation.  It was weird, in retrospect, how he’d managed to butt in on Lance and Pidge’s conversation last night.  Lance and Pidge had already had communication through their lions before, so it was a little bit easier the second time around, but Keith had been utterly hopeless in training sessions, and had never tried opening up a psychic link between himself and Red before, let alone contacting the other lions or paladins.  And now, all of a sudden, that psychic link was forced open, even if Keith still wasn’t good enough at it that he could understand what his lion was trying to tell him most of the time.  That time he saw Lance’s nightmares.  He’d mentioned it.  Mentioned that he couldn’t sleep because of it.

And honestly?  Some part of Lance wasn’t even surprised.  They weren’t like the paladins of old, who trained in their lions for years and years together before going into battle.  They weren’t able to avoid any and all injury – hell, they practically invited it.  One of the others was bound to get hurt at some point, bound to bleed someplace they oughtn’t.  The wheel of fate turned, and Keith’s number came up.  Just the way it was.

Maybe it would be a good thing to have another teammate who could handle all the same stuff Lance could now.  Another guy who Lance didn’t have to worry about outliving.

But seriously, out of all of them… he had to get stuck with _Keith_ for eternity?  Not to knock the guy or anything.  He was all right when he wasn’t putting in real effort into being an unmitigated jackass.  It was just ironic.

Selma shoved a shell-shocked Keith towards a bathroom with a little cup (rest in piss, buddy) and Lance tried his hardest to school his face into something that wasn’t fear.  They had to run.  Now.  If Shiro and Allura weren’t where they were supposed to be yet, they had no one but themselves to blame.  As soon as Keith came out of the bathroom, it was go time.

His focus shifted to Pidge and Hunk, trying to convey with expression alone that they were preparing to make their move, and that they’d deal with the whole Keith situation later.  Hunk got it.  His posture changed a little, straightening, and he nudged Pidge before glancing over towards the door briefly.  She got the hint and widened her stance.  The doctor noticed absolutely none of this, as she was still labelling the three vials of blood she’d gotten from Keith.  If they could smash those vials before any testing got done on them, that would be ideal.

And then Lance heard something he hadn’t been expecting.

 _Click, click, click_.

Like bullet casings hitting the floor.

It was getting closer and closer, approaching them from the hallway outside.

“Ma’am, you can’t be here,” the guard outside the door said.

“My lawyers – that’d be the entourage behind me here – inform me that unless you have rescinded my son’s status as a student here, I can go anywhere I damn well please.  I’ve got my visitor’s pass, so I’d suggest you step aside, sugar.”

He’d recognize that heavily-accented voice anywhere.  He’d recognize the sound of those high heels anywhere.  And most importantly, he’d recognize those pissy threats cleverly disguised with a cool tone anywhere.

All thoughts of escape abandoned, Lance’s eyes shone with hope.

“ _Mom_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to have five times as much shit happen in this chapter. Why did it do... not that? Also I might've low-key broken a critical part of a $600,000 microscope scanner. Good news is that we're covered and I'm not in trouble. Friendly reminder always to buy the extended warranty on your machines, kids.


	25. Poli-Sci

Azadeh McClain threw the door open, a storm on her face and death in her eyes.  She didn’t even glance at her child, staring resolutely ahead while the idiot corporal behind her nattered.

“Ma’am, you can’t just barge in no matter how many lawyers you have.  This is a secure facility-“

She cut him off with a bored tone of voice.  “Can’t be that secure if my little idiot managed to escape it in the first place, and I seem to recall being able to waltz right in regardless of this whole ‘can’t’ business you seem to be touting.”

“Legally, you can’t-“

Lance couldn’t believe the guy was still arguing.  Did he have absolutely no sense of self-preservation?  He tried to warn him with his eyes.  It went unnoticed, not that it would have mattered either way.  The corporal was dead meat six ways from Sunday.

“Look, little man.  For so long as my son is an attendant of this training facility, I as a parent have every legal right to be here.  If I am not permitted entry, it can only mean that Lance has been discharged from your facility’s care.  Is that not correct?”  She didn’t wait for an answer.  “And if he has been discharged, then he cannot be charged with going AWOL under military laws under any circumstances, according to your own charter.  You are not even military police, nor does your facility have any on-base, so even if you were to fabricate charges, you cannot hold him against his will without informing his family.  That’s called kidnapping, dear.”  He voice made it clear he was in no way dear to her.

“But he-“

“And even if you were to contact military police as required by the International Space Explorative Charter of 2146, you still wouldn’t be able to press charges because of a little thing I like to call-“ she snapped her fingers and a lawyer dropped a fat stack of paper in her open hand, “-Section 17, Part 5, Clause 8, which states that trainees for the program are not subject to military law until such time as they have graduated and signed on for service, neither of which Lance – or any of these children – have done.  You do not have the right to hold them, to arrest them, to read them their rights, or even so much as to sneer at them as they walk by, and you lot had the fucking nerve to treat my boy like a criminal.  I’ll see every last one of you idiots in court.  A real court, by the way.  And I assure you, my charges will be sticking, unlike yours.  Do not test me; I can sweep the floor with you on every subject, except congeniality, which is not something the women of my family aspire to anyway.”  She turned to the roomful of slack-jawed paladins.  “Get your shit and put it in my car out front.”  Keith and Pidge hesitated for half a second, still processing the massacre that just happened.  Her eyes narrowed.  “Did I stutter?”

“N-no ma’am!” Keith squeaked, and jumped up ram-rod straight.  He couldn’t help but shoot a glance over Lance’s way.  How did _he_ come from _her_?  Lance, on the other hand, was obviously forcing back a shit-eating grin, clearly enjoying the fuckfest that unfolded before them – notably the bit where he wasn’t the intended target of her wrath for once.

“And what are you smiling about?  Your butt is next up on my list, mister,” she said.  His face morphed into one of alarm.  So much for that.

They followed her and her army of lawyers out to the front parking lot silently.  None of them had brought any personal belongings aside from their clothing, and privately suspected their stuff from when they were students had all been confiscated, anyway.  Maybe even thrown out.  Or at least divvied up between the other students who were 100% the type to loot whatever was left.  Hunk knew for fact he’d left a three-week-old tuna sandwich hidden under his bed in a Tupperware container he was too scared to open, and God only knew how long it took the Garrison to discover it.  Had to be a dark day, indeed.  And, of course, if Lance had any fewer than 127 pudding cups, Hunk would be deeply surprised.

The sound of footsteps echoed off the walls as they made the trek around the compound out to the front parking.  Pidge’s nerves were clearly getting the better of her as she edged up a bit to walk next to Mrs. McClain, jaw working like she desperately wanted to say something.

Without so much as a glance, Mrs. McClain already knew.  “Not here.  Outside.  Where there aren’t cameras or audio recorders.”

Pidge blinked.  “Yes, ma’am.”  Fell back a little, eyes flicking to the security cameras stationed every few feet.

It didn’t take them long, all things considered, to make it to the exit.  One of the lawyers leaped ahead to open the door for the entourage, and light assaulted their eyes.

It was still a little cloudy outside from the storm the previous night, but was obviously clearing up.  Puddles littered the tarmac, and the bright morning light of dawn stabbed all of them in the face with brutal accuracy – except for Mrs. McClain, of course, who had the foresight to shove massive Gucci shades onto her nose not a minute too soon.

The lawyers split up to pile into their respective cars, and the rest of the paladins just followed Lance, who knew exactly which car was his mom’s.

Hunk leaned close to Lance and whispered, “Hey, are you sure we should be…?  I mean, Allura and Shiro and Abi are all still kinda stranded, aren’t they?”

Lance blinked in surprise.  He’d totally forgotten.  A quick query off to Abi and he had an answer.  “They’re both already on board Abi.  Looks like they got the message, although they aren’t sure what to do now.  Personal suggestion?  Abi just… follows us, I guess.”

“This is a bad idea,” Hunk grumbled as he squeezed into the back seat.  Pidge called shotgun by default, so the boys would all have to cram into the backseat of the McClain family SUV.

Mrs. McClain herself sat in the driver’s seat, buckled already and breathing deeply as she flicked on the air conditioning and fan.  She floundered for a moment, at a loss for words and clearly unfamiliar with the sensation.

“I… am glad to see you all are safe.  There were some… concerns.”  She fixed one hard eye on Lance’s through the rear view mirror.  “Not so much as a single communications line to home.  Not one word that you were, oh, I don’t know, _alive and well_ or other insignificant bits of information like that.  Do you have any clue what it’s like, not knowing where your child is?  Not even knowing if-?”  She cut short, swallowed.  Fixed her eyes on the tarmac ahead of her as she pulled through the parking space.  “The point is, you could have at least tried to give me a status update.  Hunk, your parents are staying at my home.  They flew in this morning, a few hours ago, after they got the call.  And… Pidge?  Katie?  Whatever you’d like to be called, anyway – your mother said she was driving down today.  She should be at the house by now, although there are a fair number of traffic delays, what with all this bizarre weather causing mudslides and the like.  The roads are disgusting.  I wouldn’t call them dangerous, exactly, just covered in sand sludge that gums up your tires something awful.  Not that I expect hell or high water could her away after hearing at least _one_ member of her family has returned to her alive.”

Pidge curled in on herself, the guilt eating her.

“Um… Mom?” Lance said.  His voice was tiny.

“What.”  It wasn’t a question.

“The four of us… actually aren’t the only ones who dropped back to Earth.  Uh, the Garrison didn’t notice, but two of our friends came back down with us, and we’re kind of evacuating them while trying to escape notice, except that’s not going to happen, because they’re in a giant robot space cat.”

Mrs. McClain just heaved a deep sigh.  “Yeah, all right, whatever.  They can come to the house too, cat and all.  I’m not paying to gas up your robot, though.”

“She doesn’t need gas.”

“Good.  Because gas prices are – pun intended – astronomical right now.  I’ve strongly considered just filling up my tank with vodka.  They’re pretty similar in price right now.”

“Yikes.”

“So who are these friends who are coming along for the ride, hm?”

“Uh… do you remember anything about the Kerberos mission?” Lance started.  “Well, uh, the pilot, Shiro… he’s one.”

Mrs. McClain sucked in a breath.  “Oh.  _Oh_.  Oh, dear.”

“Yeah.  And the other one’s a… well, I mean, the space cat was, I guess, invented or something by her culture?  Anyway, she’s cool and you’ll like her.  She’s the responsible adult when we’re out doing dumb stuff.  She makes us eat vegetables and everything.”

He got a little chuffed laugh out of that one, and he called it a win.

“So it’s all right if they come home with us?”

“I suppose so.  We’ve got snacks, courtesy of the Garrett family.  God only knows when they found the time to bake in between catching a flight all the way out here and phoning every lawyer they knew, none of whom could make it.”

Hunk blinked.  “Wait, so all those people just now with suits and ties and briefcases-“

“Were paid actors.  I went into a coffee shop and offered people fifty bucks apiece to pretend to look official for an hour.  You think I can afford twenty lawyers?  You’re out of your mind.  One of them was a poli-sci major, so it almost counts.”

“So the legal stuff you were talking about-?”

“Was all picked up a few hours ago from skimming a Wikipedia article.  Ne’er let it be said I don’t do my research.”

Keith held himself back from slamming his head into the side window.  “Wow.  Your mom is ballsy as hell,” he muttered.

“I thank you for that assessment.”  Guess she heard him, then.

Hunk leaned over to whisper.  “It’s not even the first time she’s done this.  Once in middle school Lance missed a major test because he was sick and they wouldn’t let him do a make-up test, so she went in with an army of fake lawyers and demanded he get to take it or she’d sue.  They gave up on the spot.  I think last time she employed her book club, though.”

“And we were reading Crime and Punishment at the time, so it seemed very on-theme to pretend to be legal advisors.”

Lance correctly interpreted the looks of alarm on Hunk and Keith’s faces.  “Yeah.  She’s stone-cold, I’m warm and friendly, she can hear an ant break wind in Missouri, and I can’t hear shit.  Amazing contrast, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of which – have you had any problems with that crop up?  I assume I’m right in thinking you didn’t bring spare batteries when you blasted off into space with nary a backward glance,” Mrs. McClain said.

“Eh, there was a snafu for a hot second, but then Pidge built me some awesome replacements and now I’m good.”

She raised an eyebrow, shot a sidelong glance at the girl in the front passenger seat.  “Hm.  Good to know.  We’ll be sure to compensate you for your work then, Pidge.”

“Huh?  Oh, that’s not necessary.  Really.  I was just tinkering.”

“Nope.  Too late.  Money will be hidden in your personal effects before the end of the business day, whether you like it or not.”

“Just give up, Pidge.  We both know she’s gonna win,” Lance said.  Pidge had to concede.

“So… are we picking up Shiro and this other mysterious friend?  Or do they have a phone number I should try to call, let them know where we’re going?” Mrs. McClain asked.

“Nah.  They’re just gonna head straight for the house.”

“Pray tell, how will they know to do that?  You haven’t called anyone since I arrived at the Garrison.”

“Don’t need to.  I can sorta think the directions at them and Abi’ll pick up the slack.”

“’Abi’?  Blue?”

“Yeah.  The giant space lion.”

Her nostrils flared.  “Are you telling me,” she said in a dangerous voice, “that you can establish telepathic communication lines with a damn _robot_ but not so much as send a text to your own mother?”

…It was going to be a long car ride home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My computer is pretty much dead. My touchpad does not function at all and I don't have a USB mouse, so you can imagine my consternation. I'm sending it out for repairs, but that's basically a month without a laptop that I'll be dealing with. Yikes.


	26. Consultation

Most of the car ride home was a fairly quiet one, Mrs. McClain making the executive decision that she’d wait to rip her child a new one once his father was also present.  In the awkward-as-hell meantime, she flicked the radio on.  Hunk was enjoying himself at least, since it seemed his favorite band had dropped a new album while they’d been off on space adventures.  Pidge was on her phone, downloading a thousand app updates.  Keith sat in silence.  He’d glanced out the back window from time to time to make sure the distant form of Abi was still following them, but otherwise hadn’t really spoken since they pulled out of the Garrison parking lot.  Lance was in a similar state.

It was an hour’s worth of driving, but eventually Mrs. McClain turned the radio down and said, “It’s just up this road.  Lance?  Text your father to let him know we’re here.”  And with that, she flung her cell phone into the backseat, loathe to type while driving.  Lance just sighed, picked up the phone, and did as he was told.

Pidge glanced up.  “Uh… This doesn’t look very suburban.”

“Told you I lived out by an airfield, remember?”

“I didn’t think you _still_ lived there.  Also, this doesn’t look like an airfield at all.  Well, the bit back there does, but not…”

On either side of the winding road, rows upon rows of precisely arranged grapevines stretched almost as far as the eye could see, countless plywood sticks and wires helping them eventually grow heavy with fruit without spilling over onto the ground.  Extensive irrigation ditches wove throughout the rows, and it looked like it was still a little early in the season to see fruit just yet.

“Forthwith Vineyards.  My pride and joy,” Mrs. McClain said.  “Been growing these puppies for a decade.  We have some of our own wine aging in the cellar.  The house is only a little further.”

Pidge and Keith shot accusatory looks at Lance.

“Couldn’t have told us your folks make wine?” Pidge asked.

“That’s impressively bourgeoisie,” Keith said.

“Oh, shut up.”

The house itself was rather small and unremarkable, though a few enormous sheds had taken up residence nearby, presumably holding various plant-tending tools and the hydraulic controls for the irrigation system.

It was a typical ranch-style home with a few bushes out front, trimmed impeccably neat.  The driveway was immeasurably wide and Hunk gasped when he saw that one of the cars parked there was a silver minivan with a massive muffin-shaped decal on the back window.  “Hey!  Hey, that’s Mom’s car!” he said, elbowing Lance.  “Aw jeez, how am I going to explain this one?  They’re gonna kill me.”

Lance rolled his eyes.  “They’ll smother you with love and affection first, you gargantuan weenie.  I thought we were working on _my_ eulogy, remember?”

Pidge bit her lip.  Her mother’s Kia was nowhere in sight.

Mrs. McClain noticed.  “I’m sure she’ll be here shortly, dear.  We weren’t expecting her for another half-hour at least, with traffic the way it is.  It’ll give you time to settle down and prepare.  Get something to eat while you’re at it; you look half-starved.”  Pidge returned a watery smile and went to undo her seatbelt as the car was put in park.

They climbed out of the car as best they could and four pairs of eyes swiveled to the shadow in the sky rapidly growing darker and larger.

“I think we got room for Abi here, yeah?” Lance said to no one in particular.

His mother frowned.  “…I got the impression this cat robot was the size of a small helicopter or something.  Just how large is this thing?  If it lands on my grapes, I’m dismantling it.”

“Relax, Mom.  Abi could land on a dime.  But, uh… yeah, she’s kinda…  Well, you know the house?”  She nodded.  “Roughly two or three of those stacked on top of each other.  That big.”

Her face was absolutely still in the way that a person’s might be if they had to exit the plane of reality to send a prayer for patience to the divine realm.

“I… fine.  Okay.  This is normal now.”  She hefted a purse over her shoulder and locked the car behind them.  “I’m getting water and not a damn one of you can stop me.  Bring your other friends on in whenever.  And for the love of everything, wipe your shoes before you come in.  Your father just mopped.”

She barely got the words out before there was the rhythmic pounding of feet, growing louder and louder until Hunk’s parents burst through the hallway at top ramming speed.

“ _Baby_!” Elei Garrett screamed as she hurled herself across the threshold at her son, her husband Haych not far behind.  “Oh, my baby boy!  Oh, mother of mercy, you are so thin!  Darling, hug your son.  He is so thin,” she murmured through tears, clutching her child in a bear hug.

“We were beside ourselves, Hunk.  We’re just… really grateful you are safe,” Mr. Garrett said, wiping his eyes.  “Lance?  Azadeh?  We’re incredibly grateful to both of you, as well.  We might never have gotten a chance to see Hunk again if it weren’t for your family.”

Mrs. McClain flapped a hand in a dismissal of their praise, though a faint smile creased her eyes.  She ducked inside the house without looking back.

“Oh, Hunk’s saved all our butts more times than we can count, so let’s call it even.  Two more of those butts incoming as we speak, as a matter of fact,” Lance said, gesturing to the sky.

The Garretts turned to look, then went very pale as they noted the clearly-visible enormous fucking robot lion headed straight for them.

“…Honey?  Um… Would you care to explain what that is?  And what’s going on?  Just the- the general state of things, I suppose?” Mrs. Garrett said.  She seemed a little dazed.

“Uh, once we’re in the house and everybody’s situated, sure.  There’s kind of a lot to go through.  Plus… we might have to hold off a little until Mrs. Holt gets here,” Hunk said.  “She’s definitely going to need to hear the whole thing from the beginning.  For now, suffice it to say that the big robot thing is basically a sentient space ship, and two very close friends are riding inside.  Both are super-cool people; you’ll like them.  One of ‘em’s kinda my C.O. I guess?  Or maybe that’s both of them.  We have a non-rigid command structure.”  If anything, his parents just looked even more confused.  “It’ll make more sense later.”

“No, it won’t,” Keith said under his breath.  Hunk made a strange unreadable face, but no comment.  His eyes flicked over to Lance for a quick second, and Lance felt his stomach drop.  Oh, boy.  That was the _We Gotta Talk Later_ face.  The last thing Lance wanted to do was discuss whatever was going on in Keith’s head.

Oh, shit.  Shiro.  And Allura, for that matter.  Neither of them had any idea what happened with Keith back at the Garrison.  Someone would have to tell them.  Break the news.  It looked like Keith was still trying to swallow it himself, but was shoving it back right now (rather unsuccessfully).  Some perverse part of Lance’s mind kind of thought Keith deserved it for being so flippant about the whole thing, and was smug as all hell about having been proven right.  The grand majority of him just mourned.  There were so many less stressful ways to have figured out the truth, but the whole thing just _had_ to go down right when there really wasn’t any time for anyone to do anything about it.

Well, they’d have to figure it out later.  Shir’abi engaged retro thrusters to slow her descent, maneuvering her massive frame to sit to the far right side of the house, away from both parked cars and the grapevines.  Good thing she did, since Lance’s mother would probably dance on his grave if his lion had crushed any of her lovingly-tended crop.

 **Humans are terribly persnickety about their foodstuffs,** she said.  **Controlled spoilage as a whole is a ridiculous concept and I have deep and abiding concerns as to how anyone went about discovering the methods behind it.**

 _Probably dumb people eating things they shouldn’t and going ‘hey that’s not bad’,_ Lance responded.  _Nice job touching down without killing anything.  I’m going to introduce you to the family properly later, if that’s okay._

**Fine by me.  I understand if they need a few hours to soak in my majestic presence before the formalities.**

Lance just shook his head with a grin.  “Here come Shiro and Allura,” he told the rest of the congregation.  It probably wasn’t necessary, since everyone could see Abi’s huge maw open, allowing her two passengers to exit.

Allura smoothed back her hair as she trotted up the driveway.  “Oh thank the stars this was all on purpose.  We just started moving all of a sudden.  Hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on.”

Shiro laughed.  “Yeah, a little warning would have been great.  Is this… somebody’s house?  Hunk’s?”

“Nope.  Mine,” Lance said.

“Then why-?”

“My parents are here because Lance’s mom called them.  Pidge’s mom too, but she hasn’t arrived yet.  We should probably head inside,” Hunk said.  Both of the Garretts stepped forward to greet the newcomers when-

“Air conditioning!” Mrs. McClain bellowed from somewhere deep inside the house.  She would clearly not be greeting anyone while they insisted on standing out in the hot sun beating down directly overhead.

“Jesus, yeah, seconded,” Pidge said.  She did look kind of exhausted.  And hungry.  “Can we go inside?  No government patrol vehicles or helicopters or whatever followed the Blue Lion here?”

“Nah.  We’re in the clear,” Lance said.

“Sweet.  I’m gonna go be refrigerated.”  And with that, she marched into the house.  The rest followed suit shortly thereafter, the whole Garrett family sticking pretty close together.  It made Lance’s heart ache a little to see how much they had all missed each other.

“Oh, uh, shoes off, please.  There’s the little cubby – yeah, you found ‘em.  No dirt or mud on Mama’s clean floors,” Lance reminded them.  He suddenly stopped and reached up to his hearing aids, twisting the dial a significant amount.

Pidge frowned.  “What’s going on?”

“You’ll see,” Lance said cryptically, “in five, four, three, two, one…”

Nothing happened.

He rolled his eyes and yelled into the house, “In five!  Four!  Thr-!”

God-awful raucous screaming erupted throughout the home as tiny feet slammed into the hardwood flooring and tiny bodies bounced off walls and furniture alike.  Two children, looking to be maybe eleven or so, flew through the house to swarm their big brother.  Everyone who hadn’t been prepared for the auricular onslaught winced.

Lance just laughed and hoisted one of the twins up.  “’Sup you horrific little goblins?  Your timing sucks bongwater, by the way.  What have you destroyed lately?”

“The patriarchy!” Aleja announced.

“Yeah, I believe it,” Lance said.

“Lance!  Lance, you have a cat.  The biggest cat.  Mama, why can’t we have a cat?  Maybe not this exact cat, but, like, c’mon.  Lance can’t be the only one allowed to have a pet.  It isn’t fair and we all know it,” Esta whined.

“What, don’t want to hear about all the cool shit I did out in space?”

“Nope.  I just want the cat.”

“Typical.  So where’s Dad?”

Both girls rolled their eyes in perfect unison.  “Where else?”

“Toilet.”

“Bingo,” Esta confirmed.

“He’s gonna die in there one of these days and we’ll never even know until, like, the following week.”

Henry McClain chose that exact moment to make his appearance, his wife not far behind with a cookie in hand.

Both of them suddenly stopped short, staring wide-eyed at the congregation in their foyer.

Well, Henry was looking at the whole congregation.

Azadeh was specifically looking at the two new faces.  She’d been in the house already when Abi touched down, but she’d been expecting them, so it didn’t make much sense that she’d be this surprised… unless…

She strolled right up to Allura, smiling widely.  “Hi there, angel.  I’m Azadeh McClain.  Aren’t you just the picture of elegance and taste?  Lance, you never mentioned your alien friends being actual Tolkien elves.”

Mr. McClain blinked a little at the word ‘alien’ but took it in stride, eyes bright as he hurried to offer his unopened water bottle to Allura.  “Pleasure to have you, Miss-?”

“Ah, I am Prin- er, Allura.  Please call me Allura.”

“What a delight to have such a well-mannered, beautiful guest in our home.  Most of our son’s guests are… well, we’ll leave that one alone for now.  Welcome.”

“Dearest,” Azadeh said, “would you feel bad if I asked for a divorce in light of newer options?”

“I could only commend you on your good taste, my love,” Henry said.  “But don’t think I’m giving up that easy.”

Pidge and Shiro were outright _dying_.  Even Keith, mid-sulk as he was, was holding in laughter.  “I can’t believe you come by this shit honestly,” he told Lance.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?  My flirting is way classier than this,” Lance said.

“No, it’s not,” the twins chorused.

“Remind me to ask you when I care.  AKA:  literally never.  Fun fact there for you two.”

Mrs. Garrett cleared her throat.  “There are some cookies on the coffee table.  Should we all move to the living room?”

Mrs. McClain blinked, came to herself a bit, and frowned.  “There won’t be enough seats.  Let me grab a few chairs from the dining room.”

“Should I help-?”

“No, I got it.  Sit your butt down, Mister.  I can bench press twice my body weight; I can handle teak.”

Hunk rubbed his hands together, eyes shining.  “Oh man, Mom, I missed your cookies like a flower misses the sun in the depths of winter.”

“I got my baby boy covered,” she said with a wink.

Keith nudged Shiro.  “I – uh, gotta… take care of business.  Tell me if I miss something important?” he said, gesturing vaguely.  Shiro looked puzzled, but nodded.

“Hey, Lance?” Keith asked.  He didn’t even need to finish.

“Bathroom’s down the hall, first door on the left.”

“Thanks.”

Hunk’s smile fell a little.  After Keith passed, he gave Lance _That Look_ again.  Lance tried to make a face that meant _I Really Don’t Want To Go There Right Now_ , and must have failed miserably, because Hunk started drifting towards the hall where all the bedrooms were, motioning for Lance to follow.

Lance glanced back, looking for an excuse to stick around, but Allura had been trapped in conversation with all four parents in the room, none of whom had ever seen an alien before and were deeply curious.  They probably wouldn’t even notice.  Ugh.

They went back to Lance’s room, still as covered in laundry as it was when he left.

Hunk got right down to the meat of it.

“Keith’s immortal now, too?”

Lance sucked his teeth.  “Yeah, I know.  Ain’t that the irony of it?”

“…Great.  Like, at first I thought this might not be an issue since he seemed so… you know.  About your whole situation?  But no.  You take one look at the way he’s been acting and tell me that’s okay and normal for him,” Hunk said.

“Brooding and anti-social?  Hate to say it, but that’s definitely normal for-“

“You know what I mean, Lance.  He went to your bathroom when we both know he just peed in a friggin’ cup.  Nobody has a bladder that tiny.  He’s hiding from us for some reason, and I think you know what it is.”

Lance froze.  “Oh hell no.  Please tell me you’re not suggesting-“

“Somebody has to talk to him.  Somebody who understands what he’s going through.”

“No!  Look, that’s not going to be me!” Lance said.

“Oh yeah?” Hunk countered.  “Who exactly is going to know how to help him, if not you?  I sure don’t know what to say to the guy.”

“Newsflash: neither do I!  I barely know how to handle my _own_ shit, let alone help someone else through it!  And genius, how do you know he’s not just sad that we’re all meeting up with our families and all he’s got is an empty shack in the middle of the desert?  You could be misreading the signs and he’s depressed for totally different reasons.”

Hunk looked like he doubted himself for a second, then shook his head.  “He only started acting like this after the physical exam.  He went dead pale in there and hasn’t gotten back much color since.  Has barely said a word.  What harm is it going to do to ask?”

Lance ran fingers through his hair and started pacing.  “I can’t help him, Hunk.  I have literally nothing positive I can tell him about the situation.  I had a damn freakout about it, and you know who helped me through it?  Shiro.  Shiro, who is Keith’s best friend, and is way more qualified to offer a pep talk than I am.  I’m not the guy Keith goes to when he wants a serious talk!  I’m the asshole he talks to when he wants to blow off steam, or pretend we’re totally normal sane people.  We talk about, like, bacon.  We never bring up anything serious, and I kinda like it that way.  Pretty sure he prefers it like that too.  If he asks me for advice, I can try, but… Honestly, I think if I talked to him right now, it’s going to come out sounding like a big fat ‘I told you so’, and nobody takes that well.”

Hunk was quiet.  He looked… disappointed.  That hurt more than anything.

“If you really think it’s best to let Keith suffer through one of the scariest moments in his life on his own, I doubt I can change your mind.  Just… think about it.  We should probably get back out before anyone figures out we’re gone.”  Hunk walked past Lance and opened the door, leaving without a backwards glance.

Wow.

Way to make a guy feel like shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A) I'm not dead and I am so friggin' sorry this took so long for my brain to claw through. It just was NOT coming for a while after I got my laptop fixed up. Slightly longer chapter in recompense?
> 
> B) Next chapter is when we get to actual plot. I am excited.
> 
> C) Sometimes problems don't have solutions. They have fumbling idiots with good intentions, and while sometimes that's good enough, other times... you just don't know until it's too late. So try not to be angry with either one of the boys, because there isn't a right answer.


	27. This is Starting to Resemble a Plan

Lance was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice just how quiet it was when he stepped out into the hall, but not so absorbed that he ran face-first into Hunk’s back in the middle of the entryway to the living room.

“Uh, Hunk?  Buddy?  What’s goin-?”  He craned his neck around Hunk’s broad shoulders, trying to get a look, and froze up himself.

Pidge was buried in the arms of a tall, slender woman with short blonde hair and eyes that her children had clearly inherited.  She rocked the child in her arms with tears streaming down her face, a smile cracking her features in two.

Colleen Holt.

Whether or not the occupants of the room understood the reason for the significance of the moment, they kept silent out of respect for whatever the Holt family had been through.  Lance badly wanted to ask when the hell she’d come in, and why they hadn’t heard her arrive, but couldn’t bear to be the first one to speak.  He may not have been the most tactful person alive, but there was a line.

Eventually, Colleen pulled back a bit, cupping Pidge’s face in her hands and looking into her eyes like she was the most precious thing on the planet.  “Oh, sweetie, I missed you.  I missed you so much and you’d be in a lot of trouble if I weren’t so happy to see you,” she choked out.

“Sorry, Mom.  I… I missed you, too.”

Colleen glanced up.  “…Shiro.  It’s… been a while.”

Shiro looked ready to collapse in on himself with guilt, the proud commander of Voltron nowhere to be seen.  It almost looked like he was angling his body so his cybernetic arm would be hidden from her view, curling his shoulders in a bit and hunching where he stood.  “Mrs. Holt, I swear I-“

She held up a hand and he stopped mid-thought.

“Shiro.  I’m really glad to see you.  Don’t think you’re not part of this family when it seems you’ve been looking out for my wayward kids whenever I can’t be there.  Whatever the circumstances that led you here, you brought my Katie back with you in one piece, so… good job.”  Shiro’s throat worked so hard, it was a miracle it hadn’t tied itself in knots.  “Besides, I know the Galra couldn’t have been the greatest hosts.”

And with that, whatever spell was over the room broke.

“Wait, Mom?!  How did you-?  Did you just say ‘the Galra’?”

“Mrs. Holt?  Somehow I’m getting the impression you’re more ‘in on it’ than the rest of us and I’m feeling terribly left out.”

Hunk finally moved into the room with Lance right behind him, their brief disagreement all but forgotten.

“Woah there, Mrs. Holt, I think we gotta rewind a second here,” Lance said.

“Yeah, like, we’re going to explain everything to everybody, but I’m pretty sure there’s such a thing as jumping the gun a little,” Hunk said.

Shiro looked too shell-shocked to say anything at all.  This couldn’t be kicking up any good memories for him.

“We’ve got home-brewed booze in the cellar if anybody wants some,” Mr. McClain offered conversationally.

The twins raised their hands in unison before their mother smacked them both upside the head.

“I’ll bring the cookies in here,” Mrs. Garrett said.  “Sounds like we’re in for a long story.”

“Mom?  You want to go first?  I feel like your story might be a bit shorter than ours,” Pidge said.

She sighed, and took a seat in one of the chairs that had been pulled in from the dining room.  “I… a few months ago, the home phone rang.  Caller ID gave me the strangest garbled mix of characters – not numbers, not even ‘Blocked Caller’ or anything like that.  Just sort of… nonsense.  I picked up out of curiosity more than anything.  It was terrible static for a bit, and then I heard him.  Or at least, I think it was him.  It must have been.”  She stared at her hands in her lap.  “Matt.”

Pidge and Shiro froze, spines ramrod straight.

“I’m afraid I was so relieved to hear him, I started sobbing like a banshee.  Whatever he tried to say at the beginning, I have no idea.  I couldn’t even ask him to repeat himself, because it sounded like it was a pre-recorded message.  For whatever reason, he couldn’t hear me.  But then I started listening as hard as I could, and despite a good amount of static, I could make out some things.

“He said he was all right, for the time being.  That he had no idea where his father was, but he was doing his best to find out, and then planned to come home as soon as he was able.  That the mission went wrong and you had been captured by ‘The Galra’, and that you, Shiro, were most likely dead.”  Mrs. Holt leaned forward and caught a glimpse of the metal arm.  A storm passed over her eyes, a quiet mourning mixed with anger.  “I can only presume they gave it their best shot, but it just didn’t cut it.”

Shiro almost chuffed out a laugh at that.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good boy,” she said with a nod of approval.

“It took me a little while to figure out ‘The Galra’ probably referred to aliens of some sort.  It was the first-ever mission to Kerberos.  Couldn’t exactly be another group of humans cavorting about all willy-nilly.  And even if there were, they probably wouldn’t have the means to separate all three of you.  Matt might have been more specific, but there _was_ a fair bit of the message garbled beyond the point of understanding.  I do remember him saying that he couldn’t give details of where he was, that he moved around frequently to avoid recapture, but little else.”  She sighed.  “Wish I’d had the foresight to record the call, but I was just so happy to hear his voice.  All I had was a notepad and a pen, so I made do with that.  Scribbled down every detail I could make out.”

Pidge’s eyes were horribly red and puffy under the glasses.  “So Matt’s alive.  And probably okay.”

“It looks that way, yes.  Or, well, he was eight weeks ago.  I haven’t heard anything since.  And I haven’t heard anything about your father,” she said.  “But it’s been years and years since Kerberos happened.  I don’t know when you last saw Matt, Shiro, but if he’s managed to avoid the Galra for all this time, surely he’s too good to have been caught by coincidence?”

Shiro looked thoughtful.  “Last I saw him was not that long after we got snatched off of Kerberos.  They said they were sending him to the work camps, I think.  There would have been much lower security, and I doubt they would have expended the manpower to hunt down one no-name captive if Matt figured out how to give his overseers the slip.  If he’s evaded capture this long, it might be because no one with any shred of competence has been assigned to bring him in.  The Galra Empire might ignore the escape altogether, but Matt’s obviously taking precautions.  Smart move.”

Colleen settled herself in her seat like a smug cat.  “My children are no slouches.  Either do the thing right the first time, or don’t do it at all.”

Mr. Garrett coughed.  “Ahem, so these… ‘Galra’?  They’re hostile aliens who kidnap people?”

“Well… that’s one way of putting it,” Allura said.  This was her stage.  “They comprise both a race of people and the nation – the empire – named for that race.  For more than ten thousand years, they have waged interplanetary war across multiple systems for the purpose of conquest.  From my understanding, the Kerberos mission was simply an unlucky one, bumping into a scout ship.  The Galra Empire should have little interest in Earth’s resources, so they may choose not to care enough to invade.”

“Lucky us,” Mrs. McClain groused.

“Of you who sit here, your children have been chosen by an ancient power, created by my people, the Alteans.  This has always been a technology-based war, and the ancient magic integrated seamlessly with technology is still miles ahead of anything the Galra can mass-produce, and they know it.  Our greatest weapon is Voltron, a series of five Lions – you’ve seen the Blue Lion outside.”

The others nodded, suddenly having some context for what had been the strangest part of their day yet.  Some craned their necks a bit to see a bit of Abi out the front bay window.

“Each Lion of Voltron has sentience and can choose their own paladin, or pilot.  There must be a certain degree of magical resonance between the two for a bond to form,” Allura said.

“Yup.  First chosen was this guy,” Hunk said, jamming a thumb at Lance, who waved jauntily.

“What can I say?  Abi took one look at this beautiful specimen and couldn’t resist.”

“…Moving on,” Allura said with a roll of her eyes, “we’re teaching them all to use their newfound abilities to curb the influence of the Galra, and hopefully push them back a bit.  It’s proving to be a… difficult process, and a long one, but I am confident in their potential, both as individuals and as a team.  Any questions?”

Mrs. Garrett blinked at Hunk.  “My baby boy pilots a magic lion?  And fights an empire that’s existed for longer than recorded human history?”

“Don’t forget the bayards.  Show ‘em your bayard, man.  You gotta,” Lance said, nudging his friend.

Hunk shrugged, pulled the small device out, and with a flick of the wrist, it transformed into the massive ion cannon they had all come to know and love, knocking over a lamp.

Mrs. Garrett turned to Mr. McClain.  “You mentioned something about drinks?  I’d quite like one now, thank you.”

“On it,” he said, and marched out of the room.

Lance heard the door open behind him down the hallway, and the shuffle-squeak of footsteps on the hardwood.  Keith had finally stopped hiding in the crapper.

“Forgive me for being so blunt, but we did not return to Earth for family reunions.  We are here to learn of a mechanism of Voltron’s that might be able to deal a mortal blow to the Emperor of the Galra, Zarkon.  Along with the Blue Lion, many ancient secrets were recorded and left alongside it for the chosen paladin,” Allura said.  She pulled her rucksack up from the floor and rummaged around, pulling out a notebook and the scanner triumphantly.  “We did manage to get as full a scan as was possible.  I’ve got the grand majority of it translated already.  Shiro was a great help.”

“Anything useful?” Keith asked, startling everyone who had forgotten he was even there.

Allura smiled broadly.  “More than just useful.  Absolutely critical.  We know how to revoke Zarkon’s immortality.”

Mrs. Garrett was mid-conniption.  “An _immortal_ warlord.  Oh, goodie.  My only child is off in a magic lion with a gun bigger than he is, fighting a war with five allies-“

“Six.  Plus Coran.”

“Six!  Much better odds with six.  Immortal evil emperors.  Oh, my.  I- sweetheart, I love you and I respect your decisions, but… are you absolutely certain this is a good idea?” she stage-whispered, hands reaching up to thread in her hair.  “I would strongly consider terming this a bad idea.”

“Victory is in sight,” Allura argued, “and we do not have the time to find another paladin for the Yellow Lion who can synchronize with the other paladins half so well as Hunk can.  He is a brave, strong, and capable paladin, and you would do well to trust him a little more.  He is hardly defenseless.  Out of all the Lions, the Yellow Lion has the greatest defensive mechanisms, and the thickest armor.  Being that they are the greatest weapons ever created, this also means he is the best-protected person _in the known universe_.  You have very little to worry about.”

The Garretts looked a little better, but not by leaps and bounds.  Mrs. Garrett’s eyes kept flicking over to Shiro’s arm and biting her lip.  They all could see it plain as day – she wanted her baby to come back in one piece, and that was looking less and less likely by the second.

“How can we negate the bonding?” Lance asked.  He tried to ignore the way Keith gripped the back of the couch as he said it.

Allura flipped through her notes.  “One must dispense the contract.  The original holder of the contract of the bond has the ability to allow sub-contracts, which is what allows subsequent paladins to bond with their Lions.  Likewise, they can revoke that privilege, and nullify sub-contracts.  Zarkon’s bond is one such sub-contract.”

“Why is this sounding like the standards of protocol for a friggin’ construction company?” Lance muttered.

“The original creator of the Lions,” Mrs. McClain said, sounding a little unsure of herself.

Allura nodded.  “That would be it exactly.  If we find the original creator of the Lions, the person who imbued them with their magic in the first place, that person should be able to intervene and revoke Zarkon’s immortality… and that of anyone else,” she said.

“And we’re sure he’s still alive?” Keith asked.

Pidge sucked at her teeth.  “Every system does need a beta tester, so who better than the guy who built ‘em himself?  He might have tried out the whole ‘bonding’ shebang on himself to make sure it was safe.  If that’s true, he’d be alive and kicking… and also willing to help us stop anyone abusing the system.  Plus, we already know none of the original paladins are still around, and neither are any of the other old ones, except for Zarkon.  This creator might have been nullifying bonds all this time, ever since Voltron was first built.  Historical evidence seems to point that way, anyway,” she said.

“So how do we find him?” Shiro asked.

Allura glanced away sadly.  “I’m sorry, I have no idea.  It was never mentioned in the records.”

“Makes sense.  This guy would have to know that if anyone plans on abusing their immortality, that paints a big ol’ target on his forehead.  He might move around for safety, same as Matt’s been doing,” Pidge said.

Keith had a sour look on his face.  “If this guy doesn’t want people abusing the bond, why hasn’t he stopped Zarkon yet?  Are we sure this guy’s going to be on our side at all?”

“We don’t know anything about how the ritual is done.  The old magicks tend to have far greater situational requirements, and the more powerful the magic, the more specific the details must be to get it right,” Allura said.

“So he could have been missing an ingredient for a potion or something,” Lance said.

“Precisely.”

“Well that sucks.  Ten thousand years of bullshit just because you can’t make a run to the neighborhood general spook store anymore.”

Mrs. Holt frowned.  “And does Zarkon know this person exists?  What they can do?”

The room froze.

Lance blinked.  “Come to think of it… Zarkon… _can’t_ know, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Mister Walking Preparation H Advertisement himself has been following Voltron around.  He wants to be the proper Black Paladin again.  He’s scuffled with you a bunch over that crap, right, Shiro?” Lance asked.  Shiro nodded.  “So if you knew a person existed who could end that dream once and for all, would you go after Voltron first, or after that person?”

Keith rolled his eyes.  “He could just have been following us and then sent his infinite goons after-“  He stopped dead.

The entire McClain family grew identical smirks.  “He _can’t_ ,” Lance said with a fiendish glee.  “He can’t trust any of his followers with his own mortality.  It’s literally life-and-death for him.  He can’t just hand off something this important to some of the backwater numbskulls running his military.”

“And because he hasn’t made any move to track down the original creator-“

“He doesn’t know there’s a way to kill him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're getting somewhere.


End file.
